Madonna and Child Enthroned with St. Sebastian, St. John the Baptist, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Roch and Members of the Confraternity of San Giovanni Evangelista

The men kneeling along the bottom of this canvas are the ones who paid for it. They belonged to the confraternity that looked after the altar of Saint John the Baptist in the cathedral of Oderzo, on the plain north-east of Venice, and several of them wear the white hood and habit of the flagellants. Cima painted them small and in stiff profile, following the older convention in which a figure's size matched their rank, while the saints above them stand at full height inside one unified perspective. Two of those saints were plague protectors, Sebastian with his arrows and Roch showing the swelling on his bare leg. Roch was a recent arrival in the Venetian world when this was made in 1487 and 1488. His body had been carried to Venice from Voghera in 1485, and the brothers kneeling here would have known that.