Madonna and Child enthroned with St. Andrew, St. Monica, St. Ursula and St. Sigismund

The account books survive for this one. From 1497 to 1499 the Squarzi family of Vicenza paid Bartolomeo Montagna month by month for an altarpiece for their chapel in the church of San Michele, and the last instalment came as property, a holding he kept until 1503. What those three years bought stands over four metres tall. The Virgin sits enthroned with music-making angels, and the saints around her are Andrew, Ursula, Sigismund and Monica, to whom the chapel itself was dedicated. For a painter who spent his working life in a mainland town rather than in Venice, this was the largest commission he ever took. The canvas left Vicenza in the Napoleonic suppressions of the early 19th century and has been in Milan since.