Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome, Peter, Clare and Francis

Four attributes, listed in the title

This is a title doing a cataloguer's work: it names each saint, and each name summons a different object. Jerome brings a lion, a book, a red cloak. Peter brings keys. Francis brings the stigmata and a knotted cord. Clare brings a monstrance, from the episode in which she is said to have turned an army away with it — a sign so specific that nothing else in the tradition competes for it. This is the only title in the collection that names Clare, and one of 20 that name Jerome.

What the record holds

The catalogue dates the panel to 1505 and gives the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh as its location. The dimensions are 105 x 82.5 cm. It is filed under group portraiture, Religion, Fantasy, and religious and mythological cultural heritage, with High Renaissance as the style and Italian as the nationality; the measured colour family is ochre.

What a group of saints is for

A Virgin and Child surrounded by saints who never met is not a scene. It is an assembly, and the saints are there because a patron, a church or an order wanted them there. The attributes make the assembly readable: without them, four figures of similar age and dress would be indistinguishable. Why these four were chosen is a question about the commission, and commissions are not in this record.