The Madonna of Vallicella adored by St. Gregory with St. Maurus, and St. Papianus; St. Domitilla, with St. Nereus and St. Achilleus

In 1606 the young Peter Paul Rubens won the commission every foreign painter in Rome coveted. The high altar of the Chiesa Nuova, the church of the Oratorian order. He painted this large canvas, saints gathered around an ancient miracle-working image of the Madonna and Child. Then it failed, for a reason no one expected. Light glaring off the surface made the picture almost impossible to read where it hung above the altar. Rubens did not argue. He began again on slate, a dull dark stone that killed the reflections, and that second version stands in Rome to this day. The rejected first attempt he kept for himself, and it traveled with him out of Italy. It hangs now in Grenoble, in the French Alps, an altarpiece that never stood on an altar.