Sixtus IV and the Basso Della Rovere d’Aragona Overdoor. Architecture and Sculpture in Renaissance Savona

November 19, 1479: a dynastic alliance, two noble scions, a regal wedding, a sad and rapid epilogue. These pages reconstruct the history of the magnificent marble relief now in the Acton collection at Villa La Pietra in Florence, commissioned to celebrate the marriage between Antonio Basso Della Rovere, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, and Caterina Marzano d'Aragona, the niece of King Ferdinand I of Naples. The heraldic symbols of the three coats ofarms leave no doubt about the identities of the characters and events surrounding its creation, and lead us to the original location of the work, born as the overdoor to the main portal of the Basso Della Rovere Palace in piazza della Maddalena in Savona. Through close examination of the Della Rovere in Rome, this study highlights some previously unknown facts about the family’s origins and returns Savona to its role as a political, cultural, and artistic protagonist in late fifteenth-century Italy.