St. Peter

Abstract

This painted wood statue of St. Peter in the Museo Diocesano in Amalfi is not only visibly damaged (having lost the tip of the nose, the left hand, and large parts of the original polychromy) but has also lost its original context. The statue was originally a part of a huge (ca. 8.4 m high) sculpted altarpiece for the high altar of the Cathedral of Amalfi, which the bishop Giulio Rossini comissioned in 1595 from Nunzio Maresca, a sculptor from Naples who was active at the turn of the seventeenth century. This multi-level architectural and sculptural work included figures in relief and in the round, with the apostles standing in front of pilasters. A half a century later (1649-1678), this altarpiece was removed by a later bishop, Stefano Quaranta, in order to offer an unobstructed view of the mosaics in the apse. The fact that the altarpiece blocked the mosaics gives a sense of its gigantic scale. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License