The Virgin and Child enthroned with Angels

In 1412, the story went, the Virgin appeared in Faenza, a town in Romagna, and her appearance was believed to have ended a plague. A confraternity grew up around an image recording that miracle, and in 1505 Lorenzo Costa painted a many-panelled altarpiece for the high altar of its oratory, San Pietro in Vincoli. This was the centre. Mary sits as Queen of Heaven without a crown, a green silk cloth of honour hung behind her as it hung behind kings. Beneath her throne a doorway opens onto an invented landscape with a horseman and a moored boat, and the oval reliefs on either side show her Presentation in the Temple and her marriage. Costa signed along the top of the door frame in Latin, LAURENTIUS COSTA F 1505. The panels stayed in Faenza until 1766, and in 1859 the National Gallery bought five of them together.