Lorenzo Costa, 'Saint John the Baptist', 1505

These five paintings – The Virgin and Child, Saint Peter, Saint Philip, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist – were once part of a large polyptych made for the high altar of the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. It was originally topped by a horizontal panel, now lost, showing the dead Christ supported by angels. In the nineteenth century, the paintings were transferred to canvas and were probably reduced in size at the same time.

Although the altarpiece has been dismembered and its original frame – an important part of the ensemble – is lost, we can tell how it would have been arranged by comparison with existing polyptychs and designs for them, and from the paintings themselves. The Virgin and Child evidently appeared in an arched niche: the dark curved areas to either side of the Virgin’s head would have been covered by the frame. They were flanked by Saints Peter and Philip in the lower register, with Saints John the Evangelist and John the Baptist above. Lorenzo Costa has signed and dated the central panel in Latin, making it look like an inscription at the top of the door frame: LAURENTIUS COSTA F[ECIT] 1505.

Costa was one of the leading figures of the Ferrarese school. He trained with Ercole de‘ Roberti, and perhaps went with him to Bologna in the early 1480s. It seems unlikely that it was Costa who decided on the polyptych format – since the early 1490s, all his altarpieces had shown figures in a single panel rather than in separate ones. Even here the elements are linked by the elaborate, if improbable, plinth on which the Virgin’s throne sits. It spills over into the side panels: you can see the steps leading up to it in the panels of Saints Peter and Philip. The landscape behind the Virgin would also have appeared to run behind these two saints, creating an illusion of continuous space, even though the figures were divided by the frame. Perhaps the patron requested a polyptych, maybe with a specific model in mind. Indeed the frame may have been commissioned in advance, as was the case with the High Altarpiece, S. Alessandro, Brescia.

Unfortunately we know nothing about the commissioning of this altarpiece. The oratory of S. Pietro belonged to the confraternity of S. Maria delle Grazie, which had been founded in around 1420 under the patronage of the Dominicans of S. Andrea in Vineis, Faenza. It promoted the cult of an image of the Virgin that recorded her miraculous appearance in the city in 1412, which was thought to have brought an end to the plague in the city. The oratory stood on the same square as S. Andrea, in the area occupied today by Via Giuseppe Ugonia. It was abandoned in the eighteenth century and a new oratory built behind the cathedral. We know very little about the decoration of the old oratory: the sixteenth-century documentation of the confraternity is lost, and the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents tell us nothing relevant.

The year 1505 was an especially busy one for Costa: he painted this altarpiece, a Marriage of the Virgin for the church of SS. Annunziata (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna) and was also working on the Allegory of the Court of Isabella d’Este (Louvre, Paris). Elements of the Bolognese altarpiece are very similar to our painting, especially the facial type of the Virgin and the soft landscape with its delicate hues, gentle hills and fantastic distant buildings.