Madonna and Child in Glory with St. Bartholomew, St. John the Baptist, St. Albert and St. Jerome

Three of the four saints at the foot of this altarpiece are easy to place. Bartholomew, John the Baptist, Jerome. The fourth is Albert of Trapani, a Sicilian friar who died around 1307 and whom hardly anyone outside one religious order would recognise. He is here because the picture was painted for the high altar of San Bartolomeo in Cremona, a Carmelite church, and Albert was the Carmelites' own saint. Camillo Boccaccino signed the canvas, although readings of the date on it differ. It stands nearly 3 m tall. The museum sees Raphael, Pordenone and Dosso Dossi behind the way it is put together, with a landscape worked in soft light and shadow. It came to Milan in 1809, when Napoleon's government closed the religious houses of Lombardy.