The Coronation of the Virgin with Saints Luke, Dominic, and John the Evangelist

Embodying the Counter Reformation instruction that religious art should be the
‘bible of the poor’, this enormous altarpiece is clearly divided into the realms of Heaven and Earth. In the celestial zone the Virgin is crowned Queen of Heaven by Christ, God the Father and the Holy Ghost, who together hold three crowns above her head. They are accompanied by a host of angels bearing branches of pink roses – the rose being symbolic of the Virgin Mary and the cult  of the Rosary.

Saints Luke, Dominic and John the Evangelist kneel in the earthly realm below. Saint John the Evangelist is accompanied by his eagle, and the centre bottom of the canvas features the ox of Saint Luke. Saint Dominic, holding rosaries in each hand, is in a position of prayer. Saint John the Evangelist raises his left hand in a gesture of blessing, while Saint Luke, presumably writing his gospel, displays the open book as if to invite the viewer to read the illegible text.

Throughout the 1570s and up to the mid-1580s Bartolomeo Passerotti was a leading painter in Bologna, which was to become a thriving centre for Italian Baroque art in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was an important influence on the young Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) and he taught his brother Agostino Carracci (1557–1602), both of whom are central figures in baroque art. The painting is signed with the artist’s device of a small sparrow, ‘passerotti’ meaning  ‘young sparrows’ in Italian.

Tony Magnusson, Curator of European Art, 2016–18