信仰

In July 1500 one branch of the Baglioni family murdered most of its relatives in a single night in Perugia. Grifonetto, one of the killers, was himself killed within days, and his mother Atalanta commissioned an altarpiece in his memory for the church of San Francesco al Prato. Raphael delivered it in 1507, at 24. This narrow strip of monochrome sat along the base of it. Faith holds up a chalice with the host above it, and a winged putto stands in a painted niche to either side, the whole thing toned to imitate carved stone. The altarpiece did not stay in one place. Its main panel, the Deposition, went to Rome in 1608 for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and these three virtues were taken to Paris in 1797 under the treaty with the papacy, came back after Napoleon's fall, and ended up in the Vatican's picture gallery.