Madonna Enthroned with Saints Bobo and Eligius and a Music-Making Angel

Saint Bobo and Saint Eligius make an unusual pair. Eligius was a 7th-century goldsmith who became bishop of Noyon in northern France and the patron of anyone who worked metal, smiths and farriers among them. Bobo, also called Bovo, was a knight from Provence who died on pilgrimage at Voghera, south of Milan, and was invoked as a protector of livestock. Gaudenzio Ferrari set them on either side of the Virgin's throne, with an angel playing a harp on the step, at a time the museum places between about 1530 and 1534.

The panel once stood above a predella, a strip of small scenes along the base. A document of 14 July 1534 mentions four stories of Saints Bovus and Eligius for it. Four little panels had reached the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables, Florida, from the Kress Foundation in 1961, catalogued under Gaudenzio's circle and showing saints nobody could name. The Italian scholar Alessandro Uccelli recognised them as those four scenes, so the altarpiece is now divided between Turin and Florida. Turin bought the main panel in 1870 from the painter Paolo Orlandi.