3. Italian Painting (13-18th c.)

The scene depicts the martyrdom of St. Peter who – as medieval tradition would have it – was crucified in Rome on the Gianicolo hill on the west bank of the Tiber. The site is commemorated by the church of San Pietro in Montorio. Having felt unworthy of dying the same way as his Master, the saint is crucified upside down at his own request. We have no evidence that the painter of the scene had ever been to Rome, but he may have certainly known the site from representations widely spread at the time. To the right, the curves of the Tiber and the papal castle of Castel Sant’Angelo – earlier, the Mausoleum of Hadrian – appear. The work is a fragment of a predella, from which three other scenes are known. The original sequence of the scenes can be determined on the basis of the remains of the different decorative borders between them: Saint Bernardino Restoring a Child to Life (Private coll.), Banquet of Herod (The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY), Crucifixion (City Art Gallery, Manchester), Crucifixion of St. Peter, and finally, a lost piece. The scenes are sketched quickly and with practiced movements; they are closest to the predella of Matteo di Giovanni’s Celsi altarpiece from 1480 (Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena).