Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome, Benedict, Mary Magdalene and Justina

Benedetto Rusconi's Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome, Benedict, Mary Magdalene, and Justina, painted around 1515 and now at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, is a sacra conversazione from the Venetian school in the tradition of Giovanni Bellini. The grouping of four saints around the Madonna and Child — Jerome the scholar, Benedict the founder of Western monasticism, Mary Magdalene the repentant sinner, and Justina the Paduan martyr — suggests a commission from a monastic or ecclesiastical institution. Rusconi, known as Marco Basaiti, was a Venetian painter who specialized in devotional works of refined quality within the Bellini tradition.

The Venetian sacra conversazione achieves its characteristic spatial unity through consistent warm lighting that bathes all figures equally. The composition follows Bellini's established formula, with the saints grouped in apparent devotional communion around the central Madonna and Child.