Madonna and Child with Saints Lawrence and Margaret of Antioch

Francesco Bonsignori's Madonna and Child with Saints Lawrence and Margaret of Antioch, painted around 1500 and now in the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in Bournemouth, is a sacra conversazione by a Veronese painter who also worked for the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Bonsignori, who trained in Verona under Giolfino and absorbed influence from Giovanni Bellini through his work in the Venetian orbit, was appointed court painter to the Gonzaga in 1490. Saints Lawrence and Margaret — the deacon-martyr and the dragon-defeating virgin martyr — were popular intercessors whose specific combination suggests a patron with personal or institutional devotion to these saints. The painting's presence in a British regional museum reflects the nineteenth-century dispersal of Italian Renaissance works.

The sacra conversazione places the Madonna and Child centrally with a flanking saint on each side. Bellini's influence is evident in the warm Venetian color and the soft, graduated modeling of the figures. Saints Lawrence and Margaret are rendered with their distinctive attributes — grill and crown or dragon.