Madonna and Child with Saint Francis, the Donor Fra Jacopo da Montefalco and Saint Bernardino of Siena

Bernardino of Siena, the gaunt old friar kneeling at the right, died in 1444 and was declared a saint in 1450, only six years later. When Benozzo Gozzoli painted this small panel around 1452, the halo round his head was new.

Gozzoli was working in the Umbrian hill town of Montefalco at the time, painting for its Franciscan friars, and both saints here belong to that order. Francis kneels at the left with his hands opened, and pressed against his side, much smaller, kneels the friar who paid for the picture, Fra Jacopo da Montefalco. The Virgin sits in a flowering meadow in front of a patterned cloth held up by two angels in red, her hands crossed on her breast and the Child lying across her lap. Gozzoli put the same three figures, Virgin, Francis and Bernardino, in a fresco above the door of the friary church of San Fortunato outside Montefalco. The panel is only about half a metre wide and came to Vienna in 1872.