Madonna Enthroned with Angels and Saints Apollonia, Augustine, Catherine, Joseph, Grata, Philip Benizi and Barbara (San Gottardo Altarpiece)

Seven saints stand around this throne. The label names every one of them, which is not much help when you are in front of the picture. From the left: Apollonia, holding the pincers she was tortured with. Augustine, dressed as a bishop. Catherine of Alexandria, with the broken spiked wheel. Then, at the centre, Joseph with his staff. After him Grata, then Philip Benizi, a friar of the Servite order, and at the right Barbara with the book she read in her prison tower.

Joseph has the middle because the men who paid for the picture were the Scuola di San Giuseppe, a lay confraternity under his patronage, and it went above their altar in the church of San Gottardo in Bergamo. Grata is there because she is Bergamo's own saint, the woman who by local tradition gathered up the body of Alexander, the city's patron martyr.

Cariani reached Bergamo on 15 August 1517, and this was the first thing he painted there. After the church was suppressed in 1803 the canvas was carried off to Milan for the new gallery at Brera.