Painted during Hannibal's stay in Parma, the altarpiece reveals the passionate study of Correggio: from the flight of the angels carrying the Cross to the group with the fainted Virgin, reminiscent of Correggio's Deposition, once in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. To emancipate himself from the artifice of the manner, Annibale found in “his beloved Correggio” the most congenial guide, so much so that he was considered “one of the best imitators. Among the ancient sources, the most careful judgment is that of Bellori who describes the picture with loving punctuality and concludes with irreplaceable words: "It cannot be said enough how much Annibale entered and made the best parts of Coreggio his own, so in the arrangement and in the movements of the figures, as in surrounding them and coloring them with the sweet idea of that great master, and particularly in the glory above which seems tempered by his brush”. Introduced by the Franciscan saints Clare of Assisi and Francis - related to the destination for the Capuchin church - the evangelical drama is recreated by the intertwining of the sliding floors and by the intensity of the light on the dead body of Christ. A drawing in the Uffizi refers to Hannibal's attention to the central figure of the sacred representation and recalls the study of anatomy undertaken by the Incamminati under the guidance of the physician Domenico. Behind the Virgin, the figure of St. John the Evangelist seems to reflect, in the gesture and draped mantle, inventions of the contemporary Bartolomeo Cesi, a committed "Christian craftsman". On the left, the opening onto the landscape at twilight prefigures one of the great themes of Hannibal's painting.