The Virgin and Donor

The man kneeling here is holding the building this painting used to be inside. He offers the Virgin a small model of the chapel, his family lined up behind him and ranks of angels around them, which was how a private oratory in the Lombard countryside recorded who had paid for it.

He is generally identified as Stefano Porro, a counsellor in the service of the Visconti lords of Milan, and the chapel stood on Porro land at Mocchirolo, about 25 km north of the city. On the wall across the presbytery from him the painter set the mystic marriage of Saint Catherine, usually read as a reference to Porro's wife, who was called Caterina.

The fresco is 323 centimetres high and 217 wide, which is very nearly the whole wall it was taken from.