Members of Bologna’s most powerful 15th-century family are laid to rest in the Cappella Bentivoglio (behind the altar to the left; you must insert .50€ to light the chapel). Their likenesses appear in frescoes by Lorenzo Costa, who came to Bologna in the 1480s from Ferrara before moving on to Mantua, where he achieved his greatest fame. “Madonna Enthroned” is an especially telling window into the lives of the family, who were continually plotting and plotted against and were finally expelled from Bologna under papal edict. Giovanni II Bentiviglio, who was eventually excommunicated and imprisoned in Rome, kneels with his wife next to the Madonna, as his children look on, the lot of them giving thanks for the discovery of a conspiracy to overthrow them. “Triumph of Death” shows a ghastly procession in which death, represented by a scythe-wielding skeleton, is seated on a chariot drawn by oxen. Anton Galeazzo Bentivoglio, who fell out of favor with the papacy and was beheaded in 1435, lies in a tomb designed by Jacopo della Quercia, who labored so long over the doors to the Basilica of San Petronio. For an eerie thrill, follow the left-side chapels about half way down until you come to the one housing a terrifyingly realistic-looking effigy of the corpse of Christ, encased in glass and complete with lash marks, oozing wounds, and plenty of blood.
- Frommer's Staff