Madona da Vitória

This altarpiece is a thank-you note for surviving a battle. In July 1495 Francesco Gonzaga, ruler of Mantua, led an Italian alliance against the retreating French army of Charles VIII at Fornovo. The fighting was brutal and the outcome was murky, but Gonzaga claimed the victory and commissioned Mantegna to paint this in gratitude the next year. There he kneels in armour at the Madonna's feet, under a canopy hung with coral, fruit and birds, worked with Mantegna's usual hard, sculpted precision. It was made for a new church built on the same vow and carried there in solemn procession one year after the battle. Three centuries later Napoleon's troops took it from Mantua, which is how a Mantuan war memorial came to hang in the Louvre.