San Domenico di Pesaro Altarpiece

The San Domenico di Pesaro Altarpiece is a 1524-1526 oil on panel painting by Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. The work dates to the same period as Savoldo's Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Castelbarco Albani collection, Milan), also produced for San Domenico. It shows the Madonna and Child seated between two angel musicians, while in the lower register it shows (from left to right) Saint Peter, Saint Dominic, Saint Paul and Saint Jerome.[1]

In 1524 the Dominicans of the San Domenico Monastery in Pesaro commissioned a large altarpiece for the high altar from Savoldo, who had settled in Venice a few years earlier. The contract was signed on 15 June by Prior Innocenzo da Pesaro. The commission also included a cymatium showing a "Pieta of Our Lord Jesus Christ", identified with The Dead Christ Supported by Joseph of Arimathea (Cleveland Museum of Art) and a lost predella (made up of two "quadriciti" and of a tabernacle door painted with the face of Saint Peter Martyr).[2]

The work was broken up and dispersed in the 17th century, probably around 1646 when it was taken down for the Baroque remodelling of the church's interior. An inscription on the obverse records the central panel being "raised" in 1797 and when the monastery was suppressed in 1808 the French authorities had the work sent to Brera. Due to its size (5.05 by 2.12 m) it has remained in the same room ever since except for during the world wars. It remained in place during a recent restoration, carried out within a transparent polycarbonate display case on a mobile platform and completed in 2005.