3-002-800 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Donor, 1507. This painting depicts the Madonna and Child on a patterned marble throne between Saints John the Baptist at the left and Jerome at the right. The donors (the individuals who commissioned the work) are shown bust-length and in prayer on a slightly lower plane that keeps them at a distance from the holy figures and closer to the secular world. Their specific identifies are now unknown but they were presumably husband and wife, since their respective families’ coats of arms are shown “impaled,” or combined, on a single shield between them. The man’s coat of arms belong the Pisani family and the woman’s to the Besagio. Both families were influential in 16th-century Venetian society, and the marriage between them documented by Carpaccio’s painting probably occurred in 1507, the date inscribed in Roman numerals on the step below the Madonna’s throne.