Interior view of the Cappella di San Giacomo Maggiore

The Chapel of San Giacomo Maggiore (now Chapel of San Felice) in the southern transept of the Basilica of Sant’Antonio (commonly called the “Santo”) was commissioned by the condottiere, Bonifazio de’ Lupi in 1372. Its principal designers were the architect and sculptor Andriolo de’ Santi, and the painter Altichiero.

The lay patron, Bonifacio Lupi, aided by the protohumanist Lombardo della Seta, contracted Andriolo to remodel this chapel, situated opposite that of Sant’Antonio, so as to make it fit with its surroundings. This included sculpture on the chapel entrance wall and tombs inside, all to have been carved by the master’s hand. Andriolo did not live to see the completion of the chapel, which was completed by his son Giovanni (d 7 Aug 1392), who received the final payment on 20 March 1376.

In transforming the pre-existing transept of the Basilica into the chapel, Andriolo solved many problems. He converted a large, unfocused space into an intimate one; he regularized an irregular ground plan; he resolved a potential conflict of longitudinal and lateral axes; and he established the means to focus the viewer’s attention on both the altar and the tombs of the chapel’s patron and his kinsmen.

Altichiero tailored his frescoes to Andriolo’s architectural container to make of the chapel a compelling Gesamtkunstwerk. He accentuated the powerful cross axes by pictorial means; he established cogent iconographical and formal interrelationships between the frescoes and other components of the chapel; and, finally, he integrated sunlight and compass orientations with the decorative scheme. By these means the artists fashioned a Trecento masterpiece which heralds the chapels of the Baroque era in which all three media are synchronized with one another and with their setting.