Enthroned Mary with the Child, the handing over of the keys to the Apostle Peter and with Saints John Capistrano, Emidius, Francis, Louis of Toulouse, Blessed Giacomo della Marca and a bishop

Carlo Crivelli is mentioned in 1457 as a master in Venice. In 1465, he appears as a citizen and resident of Zara in Dalmatia, and seems to have returned to Italy a short time later. In 1468 at the latest, he settled in Marche, at first in Fermo and later in Ascoli Piceno, where he remained until the end of his life. His last dated work is from 1493. Initially, he was influenced by Antonio Vivarini and the young
Giovanni Bellini, but especially by Francesco Squarcione from Padua and his pupil Giorgio Schiavone. From them, he adopted a hard three-dimensionality of form that he enhanced to great sharpness in draughtsmanship and metallic smoothness in modelling, refined and combined in great technical mastery with love of the decorative and precious, and of abstract ornamental elements. His bizarre imagination led him to a characterisation of figures that was often expressively exaggerated.
His archaic art remained essentially grounded in the late Gothic style and did not reflect the development of contemporary Venetian painting of the 1470s and 1480s (Giovanni Bellini).
In contrast to his numerous two-storey or three-storey late Gothic polyptychs in the tradition of the Vivarini, in his late period Crivelli also made large, uniform, rectangular altar panels (pale) with compositions of the sacra conversazione type. Among these are the Berlin panel of about 1488, which according to F. Zeri (1961) was originally flanked by pilasters with three narrow panels on each side, placed one above the other, showing standing figures of saints with Gothic framing. Two of these panels are in Berlin, others in the Colonna Collection in Rome, the Museum of Fine Arts in Worcester, Massachusetts and in the Dienst Verspreide Rijkscollecties in The Hague (formerly Amsterdam, Lanz Collection).
The Berlin work was initially made for the Franciscan Church of San Pietro degli Osservanti near Camerino (Marche), which was commissioned from Crivelli in 1488 and completed in 1489. Crivelli had already promised to paint an altarpiece for the church in 1483. The main panel depicts the handing of a key to Saint Peter by the Christ Child, held on the lap of the enthroned Madonna, flanked on each side by three standing saints or beatified persons. The depiction of the Madonna on a raised throne in the middle of the picture, flanked by six figures who are present as witnesses to the handing over of the key, possesses the character of a sacra conversazione, as this theme was introduced to Venice, above all by Antonello da Messina’s altarpiece at San Cassiano in about 1475. Of the six saints or blessed persons who are present at the scene, four are Franciscans, as the altarpiece was intended for a church of the Franciscan order. Front left stands Saint Emidius, the first bishop of Ascoli and patron saint of the town, on the right behind him Saint Francis of Assisi, on the far left the Franciscan preacher of penitence Giovanni da Capestrano (1386–1456), here presented as beatified with a radiant nimbus. Front right, we see Saint Louis of Toulouse (1274–97), archbishop of Toulouse, from the
house of Anjou, as indicated by the lilies on his cope; beneath his episcopal robes, he wears the Franciscan habit. On the left behind him stand an unidentified canonized bishop (Ambrose?) and – far right – the Blessed Giacomo della Marca (a Franciscan monk, 1391–1474). The main panel was probably crowned by the lunette of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, also signed, now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana in Rome. Erich Schleier | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019