Políptico da Catedral de Camerino

What hangs in the Brera in Milan is only the heart of a much larger thing. Around 1490 Carlo Crivelli, a Venetian working in the Marche, finished a towering gold altarpiece for the cathedral of Camerino. Its central panel shows the Virgin enthroned with the Christ Child, ringed by a garland of fruit, and he signed it grandly as a knight, Karolus Crivellus Venetus. Three centuries later, during the Napoleonic seizures of the early 1800s, altarpieces like this were pulled from their churches, sawn apart, and sold off piece by piece. The other panels scattered to Berlin, London, Frankfurt, Denver, and beyond, while the Madonna from the center came to rest here.