Master of the Pala Sforzesca, 'The Virgin and Child with Four Saints and Twelve Devotees', probably about 1490-5

In this miniaturised altarpiece, the Virgin Mary sits with an enormous Christ Child on a gilded throne topped by a scalloped shell. They are flanked by four saints. On the left is Saint James the Greater, with his pilgrim’s staff, and a man dressed as a deacon holding a martyr’s palm, who might be either Saint Stephen or Saint Lawrence. On the right is a Franciscan in a grey habit – probably Bernardino of Siena, to whom he bears some resemblance (look at Schiavone’s Saint Bernardino) – and an unidentified saint.

Six men and six women kneel in prayer, the men on the Virgin’s right-hand – and more honourable – side. They are stylishly dressed in the fashions of the 1490s. They could perhaps be members of a single family, arranged behind a married couple who face each other, or possibly members of a confraternity.

The young man at the front has his hair cut in the same style as the sitter in Marco d‘Oggiono’s painting of 1494, Portrait of a Man aged 20; the older men are clearly less concerned with fashionable hairstyles. The women wear a variety of headgear, depending on age, status and – presumably – inclination. Two ladies have their hair hanging in smooth curves round their cheeks and then pulled into a long plaits, a Spanish fashion brought to Milan by Isabella d’Aragona in 1489. Two wear dresses with laced bodices and tight slashed sleeves; the sitter’s clothing in Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis’s Portrait of a Woman in Profile is similar.

We don‘t know who the artist was, although he was evidently familiar with the work of Leonardo da Vinci: Mary’s head here seems to be based on that in ’The Virgin of the Rocks'. He is known as the Master of the Pala Sforzesca after a large altarpiece painted for Ludovico il Moro in 1494/5, which also shows the enthroned Virgin and Child with four saints and kneeling paired donors. This iconographical scheme belongs to a long-standing Lombard tradition, going back to Vincenzo Foppa’s Pala Bottigella (Pavia, Pinacoteca Malaspina), painted nearly three decades earlier.

The extensive use of gold leaf is also typical of the Lombard region. Much of its decorative effect is now lost, but various gilding techniques were used to produce subtle variations in texture and surface. The Virgin’s dress has lost its modelling and some colour (there are traces of red and blue pigment). Very finely hatched lines in areas of the drapery would have scattered light and given a subtly brighter appearance. Look closely and you can see a white and red foliate pattern on the sleeve of the lady kneeling by the Virgin, and that sgraffito (where a top layer of paint was scraped away to reveal the layer beneath) was used on the panel on the deacon’s chest.

Some of the colours have also darkened. Blues now appear dull, mainly due to numerous layers of discoloured varnishes and dirt on the surface, and reds have become purplish-grey as the mercury sulphide in the vermilion pigment has deteriorated.