Madonna and Child (Madonna of the Fan)

In 1459 Andrea Mantegna finished his altarpiece for the high altar of San Zeno in Verona, a painting set inside its own classical architecture. Francesco Benaglio answered first. His triptych for the church of San Bernardino, of 1462, is in the museum's words the first local response to it, and this small Madonna, known from the fan in it as the Madonna of the Fan, belongs to the same few years, between 1462 and 1465.

The lesson shows in the setting. The Virgin and Child are framed by a showy window of painted marble, worked to look carved, and behind them the land is built from simplified blocks of stone. The museum reads that landscape as a deliberate break with the endless storytelling landscapes of the Gothic painters.