Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist, St. Felix of Cantalice, St. Andrew and St. Catherine of Alexandria

In 1625 Pope Urban VIII declared a Capuchin lay brother named Felix of Cantalice blessed. Felix had spent some 40 years begging bread in the streets of Rome for his convent, and he was the first Capuchin to be given that honour.

Four or five years later he turns up in this altarpiece, kneeling in the brown habit beside John the Baptist, Andrew and Catherine of Alexandria. The picture went to the Capuchin church at Amandola, in the hills of the Marches, and was very likely paid for in honour of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, the pope's brother, a Capuchin himself, who was bishop of Senigallia until 1629 and about to leave the region.

Cortona signed it on the base of the throne, in Latin, as Pietro Berrettini of Cortona. Napoleon's suppressions emptied the Amandola convent, which is how the picture came to Milan.