Madonna on throne with saints

This sacra conversazione from 1530 depicting the Madonna enthroned with saints represents a major format of Italian Renaissance religious painting that Lorenzo Costa had been practicing since the 1480s in Bologna. The enthroned Virgin with flanking saints — each identified by their attribute and individualized through expression and posture — was the standard large-scale altarpiece format for which Costa's Bolognese and Mantuan workshops produced numerous examples across five decades. By 1530 Costa was seventy years old and had absorbed influences from Perugino, Francia, and Mantegna, creating a synthesis that was distinctly his own while remaining accessible to conventional religious taste. The work's current unlocated status in museum records may indicate a private collection or an institution with limited online presence.

The sacra conversazione required careful management of a complex multi-figure composition organized around the central throne. Costa typically created a gentle spatial recession behind the throne, flanking saints arranged symmetrically while maintaining individual characterization. His late palette tended toward softer, more muted harmonies than his earlier work, and the handling of fabric and atmosphere reflects his long experience with large-scale altarpiece production.