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Crivelli was one of the busiest painters in Venice during the second half of the fifteenth century and was responsible for many altarpieces in small churches in Veneto and in the Marches. Adapting himself to the conservative taste of his patrons, he painted in an archaic style based on Gothic tradition; his Madonnas are usually frontally posed and seen against a gold background of Byzantine splendour. There is but little movement and few details from nature, the composition being solemn and strictly linear. Only the pure and sure design of the faces and the lavishly applied festoons of flowers and fruits testify to Crivelli's being a master of the fifteenth century, a Renaissance artist with a style of his own.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned was formerly the central panel of a polyptych in the church of San Domenico at Ascoli Piceno. The representation of saints from the wings are in the National Gallery in London.
The painting is signed on the step of the throne: OPUS CAROLI CRIVELLI VENETI.
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