Despite its poor physical condition and mediocre artistic quality, this picture is of exceptional interest as a rare example of a Venetian panel painting that was abandoned in mid-execution. In composition it resembles a small scale version of altarpieces by Cima such as The Madonna of the Orange Tree of around 1496—98 (Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice), which likewise includes a view of a fortified hill-town in the left background. The figure types are also close to Cima, and the figure of Andrew is apparently based on his counterpart in Cima's Virgin and Child with Saints Michael and Andrew, again datable to about 1496—98 (Galleria Nazionale, Parma). But comparison with these autograph works rather suggests that the present panel was executed by an assistant or close follower.

The Virgin's pose is rigidly frontal, without the gentle inclination characteristic of the master; the saints are similarly unresponsive to the central figure group; and the composition as a whole lacks any sense of organic unity, as if the painter simply adapted piecemeal a number of Cima's motifs. Drapery folds very similar to those of Saint Andrew, and staring, button-like eyes like those of the Virgin, appear in a Coronation of the Virgin (Museo Civico, Udine) signed by Cima's follower Girolamo da Udine, suggesting that he may well be the author of the present work.

In accordance with general Venetian practice in the last two decades of the fifteenth century, the painting is executed on a plank of poplar wood covered with a thick ground of smooth white gesso. The artist began with a relatively detailed under-drawing, made with the tip of the brush in iron gall ink, mapping the outlines of the principal forms, and indicating modelling by means of diagonal parallel hatchings. These are particularly evident in the draperies of Peter, and in the castle in the background. Although several of the forms were based on existing designs by Cima, the painter here apparently copied them freehand, without employing a mechanical device of a type evidently used by Catena in his The Virgin and Child with St Mary Magdalene and another Female Saint (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow). He then began to apply the colour in thin, regular layers of oil paint to discrete areas, carefully respecting the contours established by the under-drawing. The flesh tones of the Virgin's face and of the Child's body were achieved by lightly tinted glazes, with the thinnest layers corresponding to the highlights. The darker colours of Andrew's draperies are the result of a thicker build-up of paint layers, but even these are probably not quite finished, and the painter would have intended to modify them further with surface glazes. The bare tree would certainly have been covered in foliage, as in Cima's The Madonna of the Orange Tree. The area of grey-blue at the top left probably represents a crude attempt by some later painter to complete the picture, which was then fortunately abandoned.

This text was first published in The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art From Scottish Collections (2004)