Predella of La Madonna della Rondine (The Madonna of the Swallow)

Along the foot of the Matelica altarpiece Crivelli painted five small scenes, and the saints at the two ends pair off. On the left Catherine of Alexandria and Jerome stand for learning. On the right George and Sebastian were both soldiers. The pairing follows the two men who paid for the altarpiece, one a churchman and the other a soldier, Ranuccio Ottoni, who was killed fighting the French in 1510.

Crivelli used the little panels to show what he could do. Catherine's spiked wheel is turned edge-on, its spokes running away from us at a sharp angle. George's dragon is almost comically small beside his rearing horse. Jerome has hung his cardinal's hat on a tree, and his hut holds a desk piled with books. In the Nativity at the centre the holy family shelter in a ruined building, with pots and a wine flask on the shelves behind them, and through an arch the angels announce the birth to the shepherds while their dog sleeps through it.