Giovanni Baglione

This unusual subject, St. Peter celebrating a mass for the living and for the dead liberated from purgatory, was frescoed by Baglione in 1595 in a lunette forming part of the decoration of the chapel dedicated to St. Peter, commissioned for the Roman church of Santa Pudenziana by the protonotary of the Vatican, Desiderio Collin.¹

Though there is no documentation relating to an altarpiece of this subject as part of this decorative scheme, and the present sheet also does not correspond to any other known works by Baglione, the arrangement of the Saint at the altar, high up on a flight of steps, with the believers surrounding the scene in its similar vaulted setting, is broadly comparable with the composition of the lunette mentioned above. It therefore seems possible that the present drawing represents an earlier phase in the development of the chapel's decoration, later discarded.

A preparatory drawing for the lunette by Baglione is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.²

1. M. Smith O'Neil, Giovanni Baglione, Cambridge 2002, p. 61
2. Ibid., p. 62, pl. 25