Giovanni Boccati

In the hill town of Belforte del Chienti, in the Marche, an altarpiece by Giovanni Boccati is still in the church it was painted for, Sant'Eustachio. It is a polyptych almost five metres tall, a gilded frame holding a dozen painted panels and many smaller scenes. Boccati signed it at the foot of the Virgin's throne, and inscriptions on the side pillars give the patrons' names and the year, 1468.

He came from Camerino, a small lordship of the Varano family in the mountains of the Marche, and by 1445 he had become a citizen of Perugia. His earliest documented work, the Madonna del Pergolato of 1447, painted for a Perugian confraternity, sets the Virgin under a pergola among angels who sing and play, and it hangs today in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. He also worked at Urbino, in the palace of the Montefeltro. He is last recorded in Perugia in 1480, paid for two altarpieces that are now lost.