Polyptych of Saints

Carlo Crivelli signed this polyptych, as he signed almost everything, Karolus Crivelli of Venice, even though by 1473 he had been away from Venice for years, building a career in the smaller towns of the Marche on the Adriatic coast. A local bishop, Prospero Caffarelli, commissioned it for the cathedral of Ascoli Piceno, and it is still there, in the same chapel, in its original gold frame. That almost never happens with a 15th-century altarpiece. Most were broken up, their panels scattered to museums around the world. Crivelli fills his with hard, precise detail, the Madonna and child enthroned at the center, saints standing in their niches, everything edged in gold and drawn with the crispness of a man who never softened a line.