The Virgin is seated on a canopied throne set on pedestal, with the Christ Child on her left knee holding her right thumb and looking down to his left. The pair are flanked by four saints, from left to right: Gregory, in cloth-of-gold cope over a white tunic, with white gloves, gold and white tiara, a white dove by his right ear; John the Baptist in rose-red robe over a goatskin; John the Evangelist in rose-red robe over a green tunic; Francis in brown-grey, with a red cross. Four angels are grouped in pairs at either side of the throne-canopy, kneeling on clouds against a gold background.

Painted in 1506-7 for the high altar of S. Francesco, Montone, this panel would have formed the main part of the altarpiece and was commissioned when the simple church was refurbished at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Berto’s contract for the new high altar was drawn up in 1506 and he was paid for the work in 1507. Three predella panels (the ’Birth’, ‘Marriage’, and ‘Assumption of the Virgin’, now Brera, Milan, deposited in the Casa di Rafaello, Urbino) were separated from the main panel when the latter was removed from the high altar, and are conventionally attributed to Raphael, with whom Berto frequently collaborated. Luca Signorelli provided a ‘Madonna and Saints’ for a side altar in 1515 (now National Gallery, London).