Coronation of the Virgin with the Holy Trinity and Saints

The contract for this painting still exists. The Franciscans of Fabriano, a town in the Marche, agreed to pay Crivelli 250 ducats and gave him two years to finish, and while he worked they kept him in lodging, wheat, wine and firewood. He signed the step of the throne in 1493, calling himself a Venetian and a knight, and no later dated work by him is known. What the friars got was bigger than what hangs here. Records describe a predella of small saints, carved friezes and gilding, and a Pietà above. In 1780 the church was pulled down and its fittings went to dealers. The Coronation and the Pietà reached Milan together in 1855; the predella was never traced. Above the crowned Virgin, God the Father leans out of a cloud of red seraphim, sharply foreshortened, as if seen from the floor below.