Saints first, angels after

The roster in this title is the standard one for a sacra conversazione: a Madonna and Child at the centre, saints who can be named, and angels who cannot. What varies between such titles is the order, and here the named humans come first. Its companion in this catalogue, by the same hand, reverses that. Neither order is a doctrinal statement; both are evidence of how the picture was described.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the work to 1510 and gives Luca Signorelli, a Italian painter, with High Renaissance as the style term. The recorded dimensions are 155.7 x 136.5 cm. The measured colour family is yellow. No location is recorded.

Angels as the closing term

Listing angels last is the more common habit across the 224 titles here, and it fits the logic of the type: the saints are the reason a particular altar was commissioned, while the angels are the constant that any such picture supplies. Thirty-seven titles in this catalogue name the Virgin or the Madonna, and the great majority append their angels rather than lead with them. No location is on file for this entry.