Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints Sebastian and Vincenzo Ferrer

This is a quiet devotional picture, the kind meant for private prayer rather than a church wall, and its two saints would have told a Venetian of 1506 exactly what to pray for. On the left stands Saint Sebastian, young and pierced with arrows, for centuries the saint people begged for protection against plague, which struck Venice again and again. On the right, in a Dominican's black and white habit, is the preacher Vincent Ferrer, who had drawn enormous crowds across Europe warning of the Last Judgement. Between them the Virgin sits enthroned with the child. Andrea Previtali was a Bergamo man who had gone to Venice to train under Giovanni Bellini, and you can feel Bellini in the soft light and the still, tender mood. He signed and dated the panel that year, still early in a career he would spend mostly back home in Bergamo.