聖母被昇天

Around 1600 a wealthy papal treasurer named Tiberio Cerasi bought a chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo and hired the two most talked-about painters in Rome to fill it: Annibale Carracci for the altar, Caravaggio for the side walls. This is Carracci's part, the Virgin carried up to heaven on a crowd of angels in clear, even light and calm, balanced order. A few feet to either side hang Caravaggio's Conversion of Saint Paul and Crucifixion of Saint Peter, lit like a thunderclap and pressed hard against the front of the picture. The two men were pulling painting in different directions, and Cerasi set them almost within arm's reach of each other. Carracci's altarpiece was the first of the three finished, by June 1601.