Madonna in Glory with the Child, Two Music-Making Angels and Saints Peter, Dominic, Paul and Jerome (Pesaro Altarpiece)

On 15 June 1524 the Dominican friars of San Domenico in Pesaro signed a contract with Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, a Brescian painter living in Venice, for the picture that would stand on their high altar. It is the largest thing he ever made, close to five metres tall, which is worth knowing about a man who painted slowly and left very few works at all.

The Virgin sits in the clouds with the Child, two angels beside her playing a lute and a shawm, and four saints stand below, Peter and Paul among them. Behind the saints runs a stretch of water with a long low quay, and it is not Pesaro on the Adriatic. It is the Fondamenta Nuove, the northern edge of Venice, where the painter lived and worked.

The same contract covered a Pietà to go above the altarpiece. That panel is in Cleveland, Ohio, and the friars lost both when their convent was closed in 1808.