Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
Three names, and one description
The recorded title is a list, and the list is uneven. Three of its figures are named individuals — Peter Martyr, Nicholas of Bari, Benedict — and the fourth is given no name at all, only a job: an angel musician. That asymmetry is the ordinary grammar of the altarpiece. Saints are people with biographies, so they get names. Angels below the archangel level have no biography to attach a name to, so they get functions instead, and the function is what the title records.
What the record holds
The catalogue dates the work to 1504 and gives Cima da Conegliano, an Italian painter, filed under High Renaissance. It measures 330 x 216 cm — upright, and by the record's numbers at the scale of a church picture rather than a gallery one. The measured colour family is brown. The recorded location is the Palazzo Brera in Milan. The record also files the entry under architecture, which in a work of this type usually means the throne and its setting are part of the subject.
Singular, not a chorus
Thirteen titles in this catalogue involve music, and most use the plural: concerts, choirs, bands of players. Here there is one. A single musician angel is not a reduced chorus but a different device — a chorus fills a heaven, a soloist occupies a step — and the step, in an altarpiece, is the lowest position in the arrangement.
Sources
6 references- Cima da Conegliano, Giovanni Battista — Getty ULAN
Italian painter, ca. 1459-1517
- Cima da Conegliano — Wikipedia
Giovanni Battista Cima, also called Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459 – c. 1517), was an Italian Renaissance painter, who mostly worked in Venice. He can be considered part of the Venetian school, though he was also influenced by Antonello da Mes
- Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas and Benedict — Wikidata
description: painting by Cima da Conegliano; inception: 1504; dimensions: 330 × 216 cm; collection: Pinacoteca di Brera
- wga.hu — record for "Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas and Benedict"
Primary source record for this work (wga.hu).
- Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas and Benedict — Wikipedia
Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas and Benedict is an oil painting on canvas by the Italian Renaissance painter Cima da Conegliano, created c. 1505–1506, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. It references the sacra conversazione pi
- brera.beniculturali.it — reference for "Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas and Benedict"
Authoritative source for this work (brera.beniculturali.it).
