Saint Stephen

The two saints formed the right panel of the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception, produced in the first decade of the sixteenth century for the church of the monastery of San Francesco in Cantù. The left panel with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis, is now in the Bagatti Valsecchi museum in Milan, while the central panel with the Virgin and Child with Angels, is in the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The saints stand beneath an arch, on a floor made of polychrome marble slabs represented in perspective. Stefano can be identified by the stones, tools of his martyrdom; St. Anthony of Padua by his Franciscan habit, his tonsure and the lily. Zenale was one of the leading Milanese artists between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Deeply influenced by Bramante, he also looked at the work of Leonardo, as appears in the rocky landscape behind the two figures.