Pietà with Sts. Francis and Mary Magdalen

Annibale Carracci painted this in Rome around 1602, in the years he was also covering the Farnese gallery ceiling with gods and lovers. This is the other side of that work, quiet and grieving, the dead Christ laid across his mother's knees while Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalen kneel close. It was made for a private family chapel, the Mattei, in the church of San Francesco a Ripa. In 1797 French troops under Napoleon took it from that chapel to Paris, and when the wars ended it was never sent back. It has hung in the Louvre ever since.