The altarpiece was made by Cima da Conegliano between 1505 and 1507, commissioned by canon Bartolomeo Montini for his own funerary chapel in the right transept of the Parma Cathedral. The painting follows the typical model of the Venetian-style sacred conversation, with the Madonna and Child seated on a high throne, surrounded by a group of saints arranged in a semicircle, to increase the effect of depth and the perspective curvature of the apse within which they are represented. The attributes that make their figures recognizable are just mentioned: on the left St. John the Baptist with the gaunt body covered in camel skins, at his side the doctors Cosma and Damiano in elegant clothes and with the small box of their instruments, placed on the base of the throne. On the right St. John the Evangelist with the book, St. Catherine with the broken toothed wheel and closer to the throne St. Apollonia with the tongs of her martyrdom barely visible on the throne. In the apse there is also a mosaic with the Deesis, which recalls that Byzantine tradition so alive in Venice. The light gradation conferred by the artist is very successful, seeing the saints on the right illuminated, while those on the left are slightly in half-light, in line with the real space of the chapel. Next to the musical angel there is a cartouche in which the name of Cima appears, but not the date, which can be traced back before 1510, the year in which Montini gave the testamentary dispositions for his funerary monument. The painting, one of Cima's most intense and intimate works, was requisitioned by Napoleon in 1803 to be transferred to the Louvre, returned to Parma in 1816 and was destined to increase the collections of the Gallery.