The Virgin and Child Enthroned

Lorenzo Roverella, bishop of Ferrara, died in 1474, and his family set about giving him a monument in San Giorgio, a church outside the city walls. This tall panel, painted in the mid-1470s, was its centre, and it was 1487 before the whole altarpiece stood on the high altar. Tura builds Mary a throne like a building, with a great scallop shell over her head and an eagle at the very top, the sign of Saint John the Evangelist. The Child sleeps across her lap. On either side stand stone tablets carrying the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, the old law set beside the new. Lower down, angels play stringed instruments, and at the foot two more kneel at a miniature organ. The rest of the altarpiece is now scattered, its lunette of the dead Christ in the Louvre and a side panel in the Colonna collection in Rome.