Madonna Enthroned with Child, St. John and St. Catherine

The painting is a picture of late Renaissance taste and it is based on a very complex and rich composition, in which the Virgin and Child are depicted offering St. Catherine of Alexandria the palm of martyrdom. On the left there is St. John the Baptist covered with the fleece and on the side the venerating figure of a Capuchin friar.
The Virgin, crowned with flowers by an angel, stands under a canopy in an open room on the slope of a valley where there is a church. The painting was recovered in Ancona by Archbishop Ragnini and belonged to the 2nd Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, located on Capuchin Hill, abandoned in 1861.
The author of the painting is unknown, but we are able to reconstruct its history and iconography thanks to its images, provenance and to the figure of St. Catherine from Alexandria who shows both Baroque and in some ways also Pomarancio's influences, as well as to Mario Pirani's description of it in his book "The Churches of Ancona."
The landscape corresponds exactly to the church described by Pirani, but also the characters, otherwise unknown, match. In fact St. John the Baptist was highly venerated by eastern hermits who sheltered in Ancona and began its cult after the persecution of Leo III Isauricus, whereas the Franciscan depicted may be a prior of the Capuchins who repeatedly made the church restored between the 16th and 18th centuries.