Attributed to Saturnino Gatti ca. 1490 According to legend, in 1291 the Virgin Mary’s house was miraculously transported by angels from the Holy Land after the Muslim defeat of the Crusaders. The house settled first in Dalmatia and then, in 1294, came to rest at Loreto, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, where it became a place of pilgrimage. Here it is borne across the Adriatic Sea under the watch of its former occupants. Saturnino was the leading painter in the region of the Abruzzi, in central Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century. From The Met Museum collection