Four Saints and Blesseds: James of the Marches

James of the Marches — Giacomo della Marca — was a Franciscan friar born near Ascoli Piceno who was beatified in 1624 and canonised in 1726, though his local veneration predated official recognition by two centuries. Crivelli's inclusion of this regional blessed in the 1485 Camerlenghi series reflects the deep entanglement of Franciscan spirituality and civic identity in the Marche, where Crivelli worked under the patronage of lords who saw Franciscan devotion as culturally foundational. James preached throughout central and eastern Europe and was associated with crusading missions, giving him an unusual combination of local and international significance. Crivelli renders him with the same lapidary attention lavished on canonical saints, elevating a regional holy man to monumental presence.

The figure wears the brown Franciscan habit, and Crivelli uses the coarse texture of the cloth as an opportunity to vary his surface treatment — rough fabric contrasting with polished gold of the halo and the sharp crispness of the face. The panel's condition retains legible tooled gold work in the background, a relatively rare survival.