Madonna of Montefiore

The Madonna of Montefiore from 1471, now at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, was painted for a church in the hilltop town of Montefiore dell'Aso in the Marche. Crivelli's elaborate altarpieces served small-town churches that could not attract major Venetian or Florentine painters, and his ornate, gold-rich style suited the devotional tastes of these provincial communities. Characteristic of Crivelli's approach, the work displays ornate gilded decoration, crystalline detail, anatomical expressiveness, elaborately carved-looking forms.

The Madonna is enthroned within an elaborately carved and gilded architectural frame that Crivelli painted as trompe l'oeil, blurring the boundary between the physical altarpiece structure and the pictorial space within.