Saint Francis and Blessed Charles Borromeo before the Madonna of San Celso

The Virgin here is a statue. In the 1580s the sculptor Annibale Fontana carved a marble Madonna for the shrine of Santa Maria presso San Celso in Milan, a church famous for its miracles, and Cerano painted that marble figure being venerated by two saints, Francis of Assisi and Charles Borromeo, the reforming archbishop of Milan.

The title gives the date away. Charles is still only Blessed, which places the canvas around 1608 to 1610, in the last years before Rome declared him a saint on 1 November 1610.

It reached Turin by purchase. In 1632 Duke Victor Amadeus I bought it in Milan and hung it in the antechamber of his private apartment in the old ducal palace of San Giovanni. In October of that same year Cerano died in Milan.