Madonna with child and three saints

In these years Mantegna was court painter to the Gonzaga family, the rulers of Mantua, and this Madonna dates to around 1490. It sets the Virgin and Child among three saints in the gathered, silent grouping the Italians called a sacra conversazione, a holy conversation held without words. The picture has not survived well. It is worn and damaged, and some scholars question how much of it is Mantegna's own hand rather than his workshop's. Painted on canvas rather than wood, it was the kind of portable devotional image a household kept for private prayer. It later entered the Paris collection of Nélie Jacquemart, whose gathered art still fills the house museum that carries her name.