The Vision of Saint Francis

The original altarpiece is in Arezzo. In 1640 and 1641 Pietro da Cortona painted the Virgin holding out the infant Christ to Saint Francis for the Montauto chapel in the church of the Santissima Annunziata there, a short way from his home town of Cortona. This canvas, the museum explains, is a copy of that altarpiece on a slightly smaller scale, dated around 1641, and the museum lists it under Cortona's own name. The subject was a favourite of the 17th century, and the museum points to the free, fluid brushwork and the richness of the colour. The canvas spent its earlier life in the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo, in the Alban Hills south-east of Rome. It came to the Pinacoteca in 1932, the year the gallery opened in the building where it still hangs.