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
Stealing the Mystic Lamb tension, the author adds an easy familiarity with the techniques of oil painting and with the intertwining vines of art and political and religious history. He begins near the end of World War II. As the Reich’s military fortunes crumbled, the Allies scrambled to find where the Nazis concealed their tens of thousands of stolen artworks, many slated for Hitler’s proposed “super museum.” Among them was the Altarpiece. Charney pauses to describe the large work, which comprises 20 individual painted panels, hinged together. Art historians admire it not just for its supreme craftsmanship—described clearly by the author—but also for its