Madonna and Child with Saints Peter and Andrew (Madonna of the Oak)

This altarpiece comes from the church of Sant'Andrea in Verona, which explains who stands at the front. Andrew, the church's patron, is there with his brother Peter. The two were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee and, in the Gospels, the first pair Christ called to follow him. They stand in the foreground, while the Virgin and Child appear above them.

The museum points to the way the saints are set straight against the distance, with nothing in between, a landscape of water and mountains. Look into it and you find a small Baptism of Christ. In John's Gospel, Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist before he followed Jesus. The museum calls the picture a work of Girolamo's maturity, speaking the monumental language of central Italian painting, and many count it his finest. It has belonged to the city's collections since 1812, and the oak in the picture gives it its popular name.