The San Gottardo Altarpiece is an oil on canvas painting by

Giovanni Cariani Giovanni Cariani (c. 1490–1547), also known as Giovanni Busi or Il Cariani, was an Italian painter of the high-Renaissance, active in Venice and the Venetian mainland, including Bergamo, thought to be his native city. Overview His father, ...

, previously dated to 1520 but now thought to have been begun in 1517 and completed in 1518. This made it perhaps his first major work and certainly the first work he produced in

Bergamo Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...

after arriving there on 15 August 1517 - St Joseph was the city's patron saint. It was commissioned as an altarpiece by the council of the Scuola di san Giuseppe for the church of San Gottardo. There was tension between the commissioners and the artist and - instead of Cariani - they opted for Lorenzo Lotto and Previtali for the larger works in the church. The painting was taken out of the church when it was suppressed and demolished under the Napoleonic regime. The main work and its predella of the Flight into Egypt were both in the palazzo Nuovo in Bergamo in 1803, when the latter was sold for 80 francs to Giuseppe SonzognoChiara Paratico, La bottega dei Marinoni, pittori di Desenzano al Serio, sec. XV-XVI, Bolis, 2008, . and later entered a private collection and then the

Accademia Carrara The Accademia Carrara, (), officially Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti di Bergamo, is an art gallery and an academy of fine arts in Bergamo, in Lombardy in northern Italy. The art gallery was established in about 1780 by , a Bergamasco collect ...

. The main work entered its present home in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan in 1805.

References

{{Authority control 1518 paintings Paintings in the Pinacoteca di Brera Italian paintings Cariani Cariani Cariani Cariani Paintings by Giovanni Cariani