View of the Cappella di San Sigismondo

In the Chapel of St Sigismund (the Chapel of Virtues) the deeply carved figures of the Virtues are seated in niches between pilasters. The treatment of the drapery recalls that of the Virtues on Isaia da Pisa’s Chiaves monument in St John Lateran and may also have its source in Filarete, who visited Rimini about 1448 after abandoning work on the Chiaves tomb. In the postures, however, there is a residue of Venetian Gothic style.

There is some formal correspondence between the first chapel of the left-hand side (the Chapel of the Martyrs) and the first chapel on the right-hand side (the Chapel of St Sigismund). The niches used in the Chapel of St Sigismund, containing the Virtues, are concave, while those repeated on the opposite side of the church in the Chapel of the Martyrs, are flat. Here the figures of the Sibyls are for the most part posed on a single plane and do not protrude from the surface of the wall.