Carlo Crivelli's finely detailed and sharply delineated Gothic style had considerable influence on painters working in the Marches in central Italy. Chief among them was his younger brother Vittore, who readily assumed Carlo's style. Vittore's small devotional images of Saint Peter (wearing the papal triple tiara and holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven) and Saint Jerome (the book he holds symbolizing his authorship of the Latin Bible) belonged to a larger, multi-panel altarpiece of the Virgin and Child by Vittore that was pulled apart in the early 20th century and is now divided among several collections. The fate of this dismembered polyptych is not unusual and should remind us that many early European paintings on view in museums today are actually fragments of originally larger and richer artistic programs.
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