The Aquila Polyptych

The polyptych takes its name from a coat of arms, a black eagle repeated at both ends of the base of the frame. Whose arms they were is not recorded in the sources, though the family must have paid for the altarpiece, and a small kneeling donor appears beside the Virgin in the central panel.

It came from the Dominican church of San Pietro Martire in Verona, which explains one of the six saints. Peter Martyr, the Dominican friar killed in 1252, stands among Anthony Abbot, George, James, Zeno and Mammas, a young shepherd martyred in Asia Minor. The museum is fond of the Child on the Virgin's knee, whom it calls as awkward as he is endearing.

On the central panel, lower right, is a signature, Iohes Baili, a spelling of Giovanni Badile. In the early 1900s several scholars doubted that it was genuine. The attribution has held anyway, because the painting matches the frescoes documented as his in another Verona church.