Bentivoglio Altarpiece

The Bentivoglio Altarpiece is one of the most significant commissions of Costa's early career, painted for the Bentivoglio family chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore in Bologna. Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the dominant political figure of Bologna, was also one of its most ambitious artistic patrons, and commissioning Costa for this prominent work placed the young painter at the centre of Bolognese cultural life. The altarpiece demonstrates Costa's synthesis of Ferrarese and Venetian influences within a format — the large multi-figure religious altarpiece — that required compositional ambition as well as technical skill. It remains in its original location, making it one of the rare Costa works still in situ.

The large altarpiece format required Costa to organise multiple figures across a hierarchical devotional composition. He uses careful perspective recession and graduated figure scaling to create depth, with the Bentivoglio family donors integrated at the sides in the convention of contemporary devotional painting.