Carlo Crivelli, 'Altarpiece from S. Francesco dei Zoccolanti, Matelica', after 1490

This large altarpiece was painted by Carlo Crivelli in 1491 for a family chapel in the Franciscan church in Matelica, a small town in the Italian Marches. The Ottoni were the local ruling family – you can see their coat of arms placed conspicuously on the bottom edge of the main panel.

Size, shape and content were all heavily influenced by the intended location. This is a pala, an altarpiece with a single main panel, like The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele, rather than a polyptych. The Ottoni chapel was tall, and needed a tall altarpiece: including the frame and predella the painting is approximately 2.5 metres high. There was a large window on the back wall of the chapel – which was unusual – so the altar and altarpiece had to be on the side walls. In this case, there were two altars, one on each side wall (the other one, attributed to Gentile da Fabriano, remains there to this day). This painting was on the left wall; the light in it comes from the upper right, mimicking the actual light in the chapel.

Unusually, the contract for this painting survives. Dated 11 March 1491, it reveals that the expense of the altarpiece was to be shared between Ranuccio Ottoni and Fra Giorgio di Giacomo, prior of the Franciscan convent at Matelica. The prior paid by far the most – it cost 310 gold florins, of which Ottoni only paid a fraction, perhaps because he had already paid for the chapel’s other altarpiece. The two saints flanking the Virgin reflect this joint enterprise: the scholarly Saint Jerome stands for the interests of the cleric and the soldier Saint Sebastian for the knightly Ottonis.

This painting is one of only three large Renaissance altarpieces in our collection in their original frames. The pala form and the frame’s classical pillars and simulated marble must have seemed modern compared with the gilded Gothic polyptychs chosen by many of Crivelli’s patrons. Such altarpieces were a relatively new phenomenon in Italy; a similar one is Pesellino’s Pistoia Santa Trinità altarpiece. Although the frame would have been made by a specialist craftsman, the designs of the pillars are very similar to those in The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, painted by Crivelli in 1486. The Ottonis had just built a palace in the fashionable classical style close to San Francesco, and were keeping up with the newest styles in both painting and architecture.