La Sainte Famille et Marie Madeleine

Mantegna painted this near the end of his life, around 1495, still first painter to the Gonzaga court at Mantua. He worked in glue tempera on canvas, thin and matte, the technique he preferred to oil because it lets the drawing stay crisp. The group is quiet and close, Joseph to one side and a female saint, usually read as Mary Magdalene, to the other. For centuries it hung in Verona. Then on a November night in 2015 thieves took it from the Castelvecchio museum along with 16 other paintings. It surfaced the following spring near Odessa, wrapped and hidden, and was back on the wall in Verona by the end of 2016.