Giovanni di Balduccio, Tomb of St. Peter Martyr: Detail, front side
1336-39
Marble
Portinari Chapel
Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio
The back of the sarcophagus presents three events in St. Peter Martyr's life, then the left side portrays his assassination, and here on the front we see the next step in the sequence, the development of his cult.
On the left panel, according to the chapel's label, "the saint's body is exposed for public veneration by Archbishop Leone da Perego." This would be the exhumation that occurred in 1253, a bit more than a year after the saint was first interred. When the body was taken out of its casket it was found to be incorrupt. It was then set out for the veneration of the faithful for several days and after that placed in a marble sarcophagus (Acta Sanctorum, April vol. 3, 682).
In the center panel Pope Innocent IV gives the bull of canonization to the Master of the Dominican order. On the right is the scene of a storm which the label says was "placated by devoted sailors invoking the saint." The Golden Legend says that after the sailors prayed to St. Peter Martyr during a storm he appeared to them and "the yardarm from which the sail hung was seen to be studded with lighted candles" (Ryan, I, 261).
The two statues flanking the canonization scene are of St. Peter, with his keys and a book, and St. Paul, with a book and the hilt of a sword that has now been broken away. At the corners are statues of two of the Doctors of the Church: St. Ambrose on the left and St. Gregory the Great on the right.
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Photographed at the chapel by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.