The Virgin Mary Swooning

This pair was made to be part of a larger scene. Mary faints, and one of the holy women catches her, as if both stood at the foot of the cross. The rest of that sacred tableau still exists, but not here. A Saint John, a crucifix and a Mary Magdalene from the same group are kept in the parish church of Cellore d'Illasi, a village in the hills east of Verona. Where all of them first stood is unknown. In the last century this pair was in the church of San Fermo.

Some colour survives. The Virgin wore blue beneath a black mantle lined with red. On her face a layer of green remains, the base for the flesh tone once painted over it, and the museum thinks it was meant to give her skin a livid, deathly pallor. The bull-necked woman holding her stands square and frontal, while Mary sags in a curve that, the museum notes, belongs to a Gothic pattern still alive in Michelangelo's Rondanini Pietà.