Valle Romita Polyptych (Q3907532)

description: Perhaps dismembered as early as the 18th century, the polyptych began to arrive in the Pinacoteca in 1811, following the abolition of the Observant hermitage of Santa Maria di Valdisasso, near Fabriano, from which came the five larger panels; the four smaller panels were acquired from a private collection in 1901. Among the hypotheses put forward by historians, the most suggestive ascribes the commission of the painting to Chiavello Chiavelli, lord of Fabriano, who had the monastery of Valdisasso restored in 1406 and selected it as the place for his own burial: in fact it is possible that, to decorate the renovated hermitage, the lord of Fabriano had ordered a large altarpiece with the theme dearest to the Observants, the Coronation of the Virgin surrounded by the founding saints of the order.