Rest on the Flight into Egypt

For a long time this Rest on the Flight was taken for a work of Carlo Maratta, the painter who had led Roman painting around 1700, and his portrait of Pope Clement IX hangs in this same room. The museum now gives it to Francesco Mancini, and its catalogue dates it to around 1732. What the museum singles out in Mancini is the ease and smoothness of the brushwork and the flowing, lively colour.

The picture's early history runs through papal houses. In 1772 Pope Clement XIV bought it, together with two mythological paintings by Mancini, for the palace on the Quirinal hill, where the popes then lived for much of the year. Mancini had died in Rome 14 years before. Later the canvas moved to the papal apartments in the Vatican, and in December 1908 it joined the picture gallery being set up under Pius X.