Madonna and Child with Four Doctors of the Church

Madonna and Child with Four Doctors of the Church is an oil on canvas painting by Moretto da Brescia, created between 1540 and 1545.It is now housed in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt.

The work was first recorded in Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso, the national church of the Lombards in Rome, where it was mentioned for the first time by Filippo Titi during the second half of the 17th century, though he misattributed it to Pordenone or Titian.

The work is mentioned in documents several times between Titi and 1835, when Passavant records that it had been sold in 1796 to the Roman art dealer Doppieri for 300 scudi and subsequently to Joseph Fesch, uncle of Napoleon I, for 3000 or 4000 scudi.

[4] It was taken to Paris but returned to Rome in 1845 to be auctioned with the rest of the Fesch collection.

The sale became known throughout Italy and led Federico Odorici to comment that the injustice towards Moretto that had consumed Italy, where the work had been sold for only 300 scudi, had been compensated for by foreigners who had bought it for so great a sum.