After Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, 'The Virgin and Child with Saint Paul and Saint Francis', perhaps about 1508-30

The Virgin and Christ Child stand between two saints, one from the first century, one from the thirteenth. They don't have haloes, but we can tell who they are from their appearance and traditional attributes.

On the left is the first-century Saint Paul, holding a book; the sword with which he was martyred rests over his shoulder. Paul, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews), was a Jewish Roman citizen. He initially persecuted Christians but experienced a dramatic conversion while travelling to Damascus (as depicted in The Conversion of Saint Paul). He became a missionary, founding various churches in Asia Minor and Europe, and was traditionally thought to have written 13 of the books of the New Testament. He was eventually beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Christians by the Roman Emperor Nero.

On the right is Saint Francis, one of the most venerated figures in Christian history. Francis was born into a wealthy family in Assisi and lived an extravagant life in his youth. He renounced his inheritance after a vision in which the crucified Christ spoke to the saint and asked him to repair his house, which was in ruins. Francis founded the Franciscan Order – friars who took religious vows but were not confined to a monastery (they lived in towns and cities).

The kind of small-scale, non-narrative composition, with the Virgin and Child between saints, is known as a sacra conversazione. Renaissance artists relied on devotional paintings like this for their livelihood – they were their bread and butter. This way of showing brightly lit three-quarter-length figures in close up against a black background was devised by Andrea Mantegna, and followed by other north Italian artists, such as Giovanni Bellini.

Although this painting was once attributed to Cima da Conegliano, it is now thought to have probably been done by an assistant, maybe using workshop drawings. No other version of this composition survives, but all the figures can be found in other works by Cima. There is an extremely similar depiction of Saint Paul in an altarpiece that was once on the high altar of the parish church of Zermen, in northern Italy (now in the Museo Civico, Feltre).