Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist, James the Greater, Jerome and Hugh and Angels

Macrino d'Alba painted this altarpiece in 1498 for the Carthusians of Valmanera, a monastery just outside Asti. The Carthusians lived by an unusually solitary rule, each monk spending most of his day alone and in silence in his own cell, and the bishop among the saints, Hugh, was one of the saints the order held as its own. He stands with John the Baptist, James the Greater and Jerome beneath a great arch modelled on a Roman triumphal arch, with angels around the Virgin's throne.

The museum points out how full the painting is of archaeological quotation, motifs borrowed from ancient monuments that give the saints a classical stage. It stands three and a half metres high, nearly four with its frame. The monastery was sacked and abandoned around 1800, in the Napoleonic years, and in 1871 the gallery bought the altarpiece from the diocese of Asti.