Altarpiece of the Theological and Cardinal Virtues

Near the bottom of this tall canvas, in the gap between two groups of saints, kneels an old woman. She is the donor, Bartolomea Baialotti Da Sacco, and above her the painter opened a deep view of landscape. The canvas was made for the chapel of the Franciscan tertiaries in San Bernardino in Verona, where it was framed by Nicola Giolfino's frescoes of the life of Saint Francis.

High up, the Virgin and Child sit with Saints Francis and Anthony, ringed by seven women. They are the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, and the four cardinal ones, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. On the ground stand saints of the Franciscan Third Order, among them Louis, king of France, Elizabeth of Hungary, and Ivo, the Breton priest and judge remembered as the advocate of the poor. Paolo Morando painted all of it in a lean tempera, and the museum notes the bright, intense and unusual colour it produced.