Virgin Adoring the Child with Saints and the Donor Amedeo di Romagnano

In 1505 the new cathedral of Turin was consecrated. Cardinal Domenico della Rovere had begun rebuilding it in 1491, on the site of three older churches, and it was the first Renaissance building in the city. Among the clergy who furnished its chapels was Amedeo di Romagnano, a canon of the cathedral since 1484, chancellor of Savoy from 1496 and bishop of Mondovì from 1497. He is the donor in this picture, and Macrino d'Alba wrote the year 1505 on a scroll on the mantle of John the Baptist, the saint to whom the cathedral is dedicated.

The painting was made for Romagnano's chapel of San Solutore in the cathedral. Solutor, a soldier martyr, was one of Turin's patron saints, and since 1458 Romagnano had held the Turin abbey of San Solutore Minore as a benefice, so Solutor stands among the saints. Behind them Macrino painted a view of Rome. The picture was later transferred from its panel to canvas, and it travelled far. From 1813 it was in a private collection in Paris, then it belonged to the New-York Historical Society, and in the 1970s and 1980s it passed through the Milan art market. It came to the gallery in 1997 through the Fondazione CRT, a Turin banking foundation.