Tomb of Medea Colleoni

Medea Colleoni (died 1470) was the daughter of the famous mercenary commander, Bartolomeo Colleoni (ca. 1400 — 1475). She died at a very young age, and her father commissioned Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, the celebrated Lombard architect and sculptor, to make her tomb from Carrara marble. On the front of the sarcophagus, a relief panel is placed between the Colleoni coats of arms, depicting Christ in a composition of the Pietà with Angels. On the high reliefs above the recumbent effigy and the epitaph, the sculptor placed the Virgin and Child, while on the two sides we see Saint Catherine of Alexandria (the patron saint of unmarried girls) and Saint Catherine of Siena. The tomb was originally placed in the chancel of the Dominican church of Santa Maria della Bassella (Urgnano, near Bergamo). Only much later — in 1842 — was it transferred to the funerary chapel of Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo. That chapel was also designed by Amadeo. Commissioned by the museum in 1907, cast by Carlo Campi in Milan. It was erected in 1909, in the Renaissance Hall.