Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints Louis, Alexius, John the Baptist, Catherine, Francis and Clare (Madonna of San Ludovico)

The large altar piece by Annibale Carracci, dated around 1590-92, for the painter was undoubtedly a very challenging public commission that would have proved his artistic maturity. At the time, little more than thirty years old, he was already the protagonist of that famous “reform” that was to irrevocably change the course of European art.

The original location on the high altar of the Franciscan church of Santi Ludovico e Alessio, already on Via del Pratello and now suppressed, explains the presence of the church’s two namesakes – St. Louis and St. Alexius - represented in the foreground, within a group of Saints, which includes also Catherine, Clare and Francis.

Alexius is depicted on the right, as a pilgrim, while Louis of Anjou is on the left in bishop’s vestments, but with the mitre laid down in front of him as a sign of humility. In the detail of the precious headpiece, almost a separate and strongly realistic painting, Annibale Carracci provides significant evidence of his painterly virtuosity.

In the composition of the altarpiece, the artist does not deviate from the sixteenth-century scheme, dividing the painting into two distinctly separate planes with the group of Saints below and the apparition of the Virgin, introduced by the gesture of St. John the Baptist, above, in a quest for balance and harmony that references Raphael’s great model.

However, he enriches the traditional layout by bathing the figures of Saints in the silvery light of a landscape influenced by the painting of the great Venetian masters, from Titian to Veronese, all of whom he studied extensively during his stay in Venice.