Madonna and Child with Saints

This altarpiece carries a date down to the day, 1481 DIE VLTIMA IVLII, the last day of July 1481. By that year Vittore Crivelli, Carlo's younger brother and a painter in a very similar manner, had crossed into the Marche and settled at Fermo, and for a long time the polyptych went under Vittore's name.

The restoration presented by the Vatican Museums in 2019 changed that. The museum now judges the quality so high that both the design and the painting of the figures should go to Carlo. One clue is the face of Saint Sylvester. He can be recognised by comparison with the same saint in Carlo's polyptych of 1468 at Massa Fermana, and his face repeats, in mirror image, Carlo's Saint Peter now at the Brera in Milan, part of a triptych he painted for San Domenico in Camerino in 1482. The museum still allows that the less gifted brother may have had a small share, and the gallery label reads Carlo Crivelli and assistants.

Infrared examination revealed a very detailed underdrawing laid in with a pen, above all in Saint Jerome, down to the lines of expression on his face and the strands of his hair and beard. Around the Virgin stand Jerome and Sylvester and the two Saint Johns, the Baptist and the Evangelist, and a small donor kneels at her feet. The pink damask behind her deepens toward the top, where indigo was worked into the paint.