Giovanni Martini da Udine

The canvas in Milan showing Saint Ursula among her companions is one piece of something taken apart. The confraternity of Saint Ursula in Udine ordered the altarpiece on 21 August 1503 for the church of San Pietro Martire there, and an inscription records that Giovanni Martini finished it in 1507. The centre hangs in the Brera, a lunette of Saint Dominic crowned by angels is in Udine's civic museum, and the predella with scenes from the saint's story is lost.

Martini came from a line of woodcarvers in Friuli, the corner of Italy at the head of the Adriatic, and in 1507 he inherited the busy workshop of his grandfather Domenico da Tolmezzo. His panels follow Venetian models, Alvise Vivarini and Cima da Conegliano, while carving remained the family trade, and that is where his largest surviving work is.

In the church at Mortegliano, on the Friulian plain, stands the wooden altar he began in 1523 and delivered in 1526. It rises more than five metres, carries about 60 carved figures, and cost the parish 1,180 ducats.