Basso della Rovere Chapel

The painted decoration is attributed to Pinturicchio and his workshop, who worked here in an unspecified period between 1484 when the chapel was fitted, and 1492, when his patron received the bishopric of Palestrina instead of that of Recanati, which is mentioned in the dedicatory inscription on the monument of his father, Giovanni Basso.

The pedestal has remarkable similarities to the inlays of the small study of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro originally at Gubbio but now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

[2] The great fresco of the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Augustine, Francis, Anthony of Padua and a Holy Monk above the altar, with a lunette that shows the God the Father Blessing, is enclosed by a white marble frame with rich golden decorations.

In addition to the assistants from the workshop of Pinturicchio and Perugino, the Bolognese Amico Aspertini may have participated in the stories of the martyrs on the false reliefs of the base, because he stayed in Rome in those years.

One of the hands notably present in the main scenes, if not Pinturicchio himself, is assigned to a generic „Master of the Basso Della Rovere Chapel”, perhaps recognizable even in the frescoes of the Piccolomini Library in the Cathedral of Siena.