Donor in Prayer

The man kneeling in prayer here may not be the one who first knelt in this place. The Louvre, which owns the central panel of the triptych, records a theory of the French art historian Albert Châtelet. A churchman, perhaps late in the 15th century, had himself painted over the original donor on this wing, and later left the altarpiece to a hospital in Chieri, the small town near Turin it was made for.

The coat of arms at the left belongs to the Villa, the family of bankers thought to have ordered the work. How the panels reached the dukes of Savoy is not known. One suggestion is that they were a gift of thanks after the duke paid for the hospital's renovation in 1631. Either way, by 1635 they appear in the Savoy inventory.