Saint Peter Martyr with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Benedict

The man who paid for this altarpiece sold spices. Benedetto Carlone ordered it around 1505 for the altar of Saint Peter Martyr in the church of Corpus Domini in Venice, where he had arranged to be buried, and Benedict, standing to one side of the throne, carries the donor's own name. Those were bad years for the Venetian spice trade. Portuguese ships had begun landing pepper at Lisbon by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1504 the Venetian galleys came home from Alexandria and Beirut with almost nothing to sell. Carlone paid for a panel 330 centimetres tall all the same. Peter Martyr is at the centre in Dominican white and black with the blade still in his skull, Nicholas of Bari beside him with his three golden spheres, and an angel plays at the foot of the throne. Corpus Domini was suppressed in 1810 and pulled down, and its whole quarter later went to make room for the Santa Lucia railway station.