San Giacomo Maggiore

In 1488 the Malvezzi, a rival Bolognese family, plotted to kill Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the man who ran Bologna in all but name. The plot failed, and Giovanni gave thanks in paint. In his family chapel at San Giacomo Maggiore, the church of the Augustinian friars, Lorenzo Costa, a painter from Ferrara, set the Virgin and Child on a high throne, with Giovanni and his wife, Ginevra Sforza, kneeling on either side and their 11 children below. Two years later Costa covered the side walls with the Triumph of Fame and the Triumph of Death, after the poems of Petrarch, full of Bentivoglio portraits.

The chapel was the family's showcase. The painting on its altar, from around 1494, is by Francesco Francia, Costa's close friend, the floor is majolica tile from the Della Robbia workshop, and nearby is the tomb of Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, carved by the Sienese sculptor Jacopo della Quercia. The church around it was begun in 1267 and finished in 1315, and its long portico runs along Via Zamboni in the university quarter.

The family did not keep the city for long. In 1506 Pope Julius II drove the Bentivoglio out of Bologna, yet the chapel survived as they left it. Beside the church, the Oratory of Santa Cecilia still holds the frescoes on the saint's life that Francia, Costa and Amico Aspertini painted in the family's last years in power.