São Bernardino de Sena entre dois anjos

Bernardino of Siena was the most sought-after preacher in 15th-century Italy, a Franciscan who drew enormous crowds and closed his sermons by holding up a small tablet bearing the golden monogram IHS, the name of Jesus. He was made a saint in 1450, only six years after he died, and this panel shows him doing exactly that, flanked by two angels under an arch hung with the fruit-and-flower garlands Mantegna loved. It was painted for the Gonzaga family's memorial chapel in the church of San Francesco in Mantua. Scholars argue over how much of it is by Mantegna himself and how much by assistants working in his manner. It left Mantua in 1811, when Napoleon's officials gathered pictures from suppressed churches into the new gallery at Brera in Milan, where it still hangs.