Count Giacomo Carrara acquired the panels as part of his consistent plan to save ancient works of art of the Bergamo school of Renaissance painting, in a period when eighteenth-century reconstructions of sacred buildings led to the removal of many earlier masterpieces, and inevitably their destruction. He believed these monumental standing saints were once part of an altarpiece in the monastic church of Sant’Agostino, Bergamo. Carrara records that it was commissioned in 1458 by the noble linguist and humanist Ambrogio Calepio (1434–1511), the son of Count Trussardo, when he entered the Order of the Antonites at the monastery.1[1] The altarpiece was in the church until the end of the eighteenth century and is mentioned in guidebooks with an attribution to Antonio Vivarini from Murano.[2] At some time before 1797 the polyptych was dismantled.

The precise location of the altarpiece is now debated.[3] The high altar was said to have had a sculpted altarpiece, according to a newly discovered inventory, but even so these founding fathers of the Christian Church would have been appropriate on one of the many side altars.

The life-sized figures have a compelling presence, both holding conspicuous books and silhouetted against golden skies and lush green foliage.[4] Saint Paul is shown with his attribute, the sword of his martyrdom prominent in high relief, constructed in the pastiglia technique from layers of wet paper, to emphasise the three dimensionality of the object, to make the saint enter our space. The inscription in Gothic characters on the open book he holds is written on a piece of paper, a cartellino, glued directly onto the surface of the painting. The reference is to a passage from the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (6: 9–10), one that is appropriate to a monastic life:

As dying and behold we live: as chastised and not killed:

As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing: as needy, yet enriching many: as having nothing and possessing all things.[5]

The first Pope, Saint Peter is depicted with keys and a closed book bound in sumptuous gold, his attributes also raised in the pastiglia technique. The book represents the New Testament epistles ascribed to Peter; the keys refer to Christ’s words to him, according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew (16: 18–19).[6]

At the centre of the altarpiece was a panel of Christ the Redeemer, which has disappeared without visual record. Saint Peter and Saint Paul were said once to have been positioned on the right-hand side of the Redeemer. There were more panels with further saints, now distributed between Italian collections.[7] Smaller panels with images of angels bearing the instruments of Christ’s Passion, now in the Accademia Carrara, have been related to the altarpiece. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the complex ensemble.[8] Francesco Rossi invented a Master of 1458 as the artist responsible, whom he envisaged of Lombardic–Venetian culture, almost certainly from Bergamo, with an artistic personality that was deeply informed by the Lombard artists Vincenzo Foppa and Bonifacio Bembo.[9]

Jaynie Anderson

[1] Cited by Francesco Rossi, in Giacomo Carrara (1714–1796) e il collezionismo d’arte a Bergamo, Bergamo: Accademia Carrara, 1999, p. 168. 

[2] Andrea Pasta, Le pitture notabili di Bergamo che sono esposte alla vista del pubblico, Bergamo: Locatelli, 1775.

[3] See the most recent contribution by Aldo Galli, in Miklós Boskovits (ed.), The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA: Italian paintings from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, Aarhus: Edizioni Polistampa, 2009, pp. 92–98.

[4] Francesco Rossi, in I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Il quattrocento II, Bergamo: Edizioni Bolis, 1994. pp. 65–66.

[5] ‘QUASI MORI/ENTES ET ECCE/VIVIMUS UT CA/STIGATI ET NON/PORTIFICATI QUA/SI TRISTES SEMP(ER)/AUTEM GUADE(N)/TES SICUT EGEN/TES MUIL/TOS AUTE(M)/LOCUPLE/TNATES TA(M)Q(UAM) NIHIL/HAENTES/ET OMNIA/POSSIDENTES’.

[6] ‘[T]hou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church…And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven …’

[7]Vittorio Cini Collection, Venice; Pinacoteca Malaspina, Pavia; Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.

[8] Roberto Longhi, ‘La restituzione di un trittico di arte cremonese circa il 1460’, Pinacotheca, 1928, p. 87.

[9] Vincenzo Foppa (1427/1430–1515/1516); Bonifacio Bembo (1420s?–before 1482).