Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter

Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter is an oil painting on canvas by Titian, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

Saint Peter is enthroned at left, holding a book and with his gold and silver keys on the dais below him, which is appropriately made of petra, stone.

As in the similar reliefs in the later Sacred and Profane Love, their exact subject matter has eluded identification, but Venus and Cupid seem to feature.

This may just allude to Paphos, which in classical times was sacred to Venus,[4] or, as the museum suggests, be an allegory which "demonstrates how Pesaro, through his love of God, achieved victory on Santa Maura".

[7] Apart from these specifics, the composition adapts the usual Venetian formula for an ex-voto of the donor being presented to the Virgin Mary by their patron saint, especially as developed by Giovanni Bellini, in whose studio Titian spent some time.

An early date was backed by Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (d. 1897), Adolfo Venturi (d. 1941) and Gronau and opposed by Pallucchini, Roberto Longhi and Morassi, among others.

[14] It has been claimed that it must have been commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the battle and before 1503, since the militaristic pope Alexander VI died that year and from then on he was banned from official representations, in a kind of damnatio memoriae.

Detail of Pesaro and the galleys
Detail of the frieze and helmet