Madonna of the Parasol

Girolamo dai Libri signed and dated this altarpiece in 1530, in his mid-fifties, and it stood over the high altar of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria Nuova in Verona. The Virgin sits enthroned with the Child under a red parasol, the detail that gave the picture its Veronese nickname.

Saint Joseph stands on one side. On the other is the archangel Raphael with the young Tobias, from the Book of Tobit, in which the angel, travelling in disguise, leads the boy on a long journey and has him catch a fish whose gall will cure his father's blindness. The fish is there, and so is the little dog that went with them on the road. The museum sees in the grace of the figures a link with the painter Raphael and with painting in Emilia, and behind them rises a landscape described in minute detail. The predella, a Visitation that once ran beneath the altarpiece, is now in the museum in Grenoble.