Book excerpt: This study examines the development of the altarpiece in sixteenth-century Venice. Focusing closely on Titian's St. Peter Martyr Altarpiece, which was the most famous work by this painter, destroyed in 1867, Patricia Meilman considers how this painting irrevocably changed the course of altar decoration. Demonstrating the legacy of the St. Peter Martyr Altarpiece with a younger generation of painters, she also examines the social, religious and historical events of the decades just before the Tridentine reforms and their impact on devotional imagery and practices.