Saint Mark Enthroned with saints Charles Borromeo and Louis of Toulouse

For a long time this large canvas was known only from old descriptions, and everyone assumed it was lost. It turned up again and was cleaned and restored only in the early 2000s. There is a clue inside it for dating. One of the two standing saints is Charles Borromeo, the reforming archbishop of Milan, and he wears the halo of a saint. Borromeo was not declared one until 1610, so Palma cannot have painted this before that year. Enthroned above the two of them is Saint Mark, the evangelist whose body Venice claimed as its own and made its patron, set high the way Venetian painters liked to place him, almost as a figure of the state. Beside Borromeo stands Louis of Toulouse, a prince who gave up his claim to a crown to become a Franciscan bishop.