Carlo Crivelli

Carlo Crivelli signed his paintings as a Venetian long after he had left Venice for good. Early on he was jailed there for an affair with a married woman, and afterward he built his whole career in the Marche, the provincial hill country on Italy's Adriatic side, painting altarpieces for towns like Ascoli Piceno.

While Florence chased soft modeling and deep space, Crivelli held onto gleaming gold backgrounds and hard, jewel-sharp line, then loaded his pictures with startlingly real fruit. Apples, gourds and cucumbers hang across the front of his scenes, symbols of sin and redemption that also let him show off. His 'Annunciation with Saint Emidius' of 1486, now in London, stages the holy moment in a crowded, sun-struck street with a cucumber lying at the very bottom edge.

Late in life he was knighted by a prince of Naples and began adding the title to his signature. He died around 1495, still working in the Marche, and stayed largely forgotten until collectors rediscovered him in the 1800s.