Bentivoglio Altarpiece Bentivoglio Altarpiece The Bentivoglio Altarpiece is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Costa the Elder, dating to August 1488. It is displayed in the Bentivoglio Chapel of the church of San Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna, Italy. It was commissioned by Giovanni II Bentivoglio, lord of Bologna, as a thanksgiving for the family’s escape from an attempted massacre by the Malvezzi family . The painting is a large canvas, executed by Costa together with other two works on the chapel's walls, the "Triumph of Fame" and the "Triumph of Death". It features, above a sumptuous Renaissance architecture, a marble altar
St John Altarpiece (Memling) it presents a narrative, meant to emulate a vision the donors or viewers would experience when viewing the inside panels. Unlike most altarpieces of these types, Memling's fails to present a single unifying iconographical focus and is quite generalized with themes that seem unsuited for its specific location, according to Blum. She speculates the donors may have chosen the specific iconography, which "celebrated intercessory saints on the interior". It is an unusual painting in that it seems to "have served a double function: that of personal propitiation and that of public altarpiece, which portrayed the role of the religious community