The protagonist of the painting, acquired in 1851 from the Rosa-Prati collection, is Sant'Agata, a young Sicilian from a noble and wealthy family who lived in the first half of the third century, who, made a vow of perpetual virginity, was subjected to martyrdom during the persecution by Decio. Among the many episodes of her life illustrated in painting, Lanfranco chooses a particularly symbolic event: after the torture imposed on her by Quintiniano, the amputation of the breasts, the young woman is visited in prison, during the night, by Saint Peter accompanied by an angel who he guides her path with a torch, who with a particularly delicate gesture applies a miraculous ointment on the bloody wound, healing her breast. Lanfranco proposes a subtle but intense interpretation of the sacred theme, with an unprecedented stylistic code that attests him as an intense painter, with a loose narrative even in the small format, and an essential and touching narrative language, where the classicist refinement derived from the Carraccis blends with the incisive choice of lighting derived from Caravaggio. This is confirmed by the wise mastery of the interior space and the propagation of a dim light that spreads diagonally hitting the chest of the saint, who becomes a living person caught in the full acceptance of martyrdom, with extraordinary naturalness and humanity.

The tablet, inserted in a precious late fifteenth-century frame, represents the head of a young woman with a sweet downward gaze and a slight absorbed smile; it is a female typology that recalls other Leonardo figures, such as the Virgin of the Rocks, Leda, or Sant'Anna. It was therefore assumed that it could be a preparatory drawing for a larger work, as the "unfinished" aspect of the painting would also indicate, which highlights a sharp contrast between the barely sketched hatching of the hair, which seems to swell like moved by the wind and then fall on the shoulders in small serpentine waves, and the accurate definition of the features of the face, which a skilful and calibrated light effect highlights, emphasizing the broad forehead, the straight nose and the small and round chin of the young woman. Made towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Scapiliata represents at the same time a symbol and an enigma, a unique work of its kind, the result of the most modern experimentalism of Leonardo da Vinci, aimed at the search for new expressive means capable of summarizing in two-dimensional space all the complexity of the real universe: movement, life, affects, that is the feelings proper to the emotional and psychological sphere of the subject. Its collecting history is also enigmatic. First belonging to Beatrice d'Este, then to her son Federico II Gonzaga, its traces were lost for over a century, it reappeared in Milan where one of the greatest painters of the Parma Academy, Gaetano Callani, bought it for his collection. which in 1839 his son sold to the Gallery.

Parmigianino's painting portrays a young lady in sixteenth-century clothes whose identity is unknown and who received the nickname of Schiava in the eighteenth century due to the exotic references of clothing. The girl with brown hair and big green eyes is portrayed in half figure wearing a blue silk robe with puffed sleeves and on her shoulders she wears a striped veil in gold and orange. In her lap she has the zinale, a very light and embroidered apron. On her head she has a donut-shaped hairstyle, the "capigliara" or leap, made up of a network of gold threads, decorated, in the center, by a medallion with a winged Pegasus, a metaphor for loving and poetic initiation, or perhaps heraldic reference to the family to which it belongs. It is a fashion headdress in the Lombardy and Po Valley area in the sixteenth century, also worn by Isabella d'Este, a lady from Mantua. In the ring finger of her left hand she wears a golden ring, perhaps because she was a young bride, while holding a fan of ostrich feathers tied with a chain to the sleeve of her dress. The portrait is among the most fascinating and expressive, as well as the best known, of the artist: the mischievous sensuality of the subject is enhanced by the gaze fixed on the observer, by the ambiguous smile and by the compositional skill of the curvilinear rhythms that frame the figure. . The slightly slanted position gives a sense of three-dimensionality. The painting must be placed around 1532, in the same years in which Parmigianino was in Parma and was studying the decoration for the Steccata, the latest example of his technical research. For the identification, still uncertain, the names of Giulia Gonzaga, wife of Vespasiano Colonna, or that of the poetess of Parma Veronica Gambara, whom Parmigianino knew personally, have been proposed. The painting, which was in the collection of Cardinal Leopoldo de 'Medici, passed to the Uffizi in 1675, bequeathed to the Medici wardrobe. In 1928 it was given to the Parma Gallery in exchange for two thirteenth-century panels from the Tacoli Canacci collection.

The work is documented since the seventeenth century in the collections of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome and it is very likely that it was commissioned directly from the Cretan artist by Cardinal Alessandro: the painter had in fact arrived in Rome from Venice in 1570 and had been recommended to the highest prelate by the illuminator Giulio Clovio, at that time in the service of the Farnese family, and had immediately found a great admirer in the cultured librarian of the cardinal, the very erudite Fulvio Orsini. In the group of characters on the left there are undoubtedly some portraits, which have been identified by some scholars as effigies of members of the Farnese family, characters that are not found on the other two versions of this same subject that El Greco painted (one in Dresden, dating back to first stay in Venice, and the other in New York, considered to belong at the time of his arrival in Spain). The subject, among other things, is perfectly suited to a cardinalate commission: the parable of Christ who restores sight to the blind was, in an era of profound religious crisis and a real split in Christian Europe, now divided between Catholics and Protestants, a clear allegory of the role of the Church of Rome which, like Christ, alone can open our eyes to the true faith. The painter's palette and in general the whole composition of the painting are still strongly influenced by the Venetian examples of Tintoretto.

In the autumn of 1810 Canova was invited to Paris to paint the portrait of Napoleon's new wife, Maria Luigia of Habsburg: the artist's diaries record the pose for the creation of the clay model live. Upon returning to Rome, the great sculptor immediately prepared a marble bust and began to work on a large statue - first studying the effect of the composition through some clay sketches - which depicted the sovereign as the personification of Concord, solemnly seated in throne, dressed in the ancient style, with a royal diadem, scepter and patera (a small dish that the ancients used in religious ceremonies): the fusion between the austere classical nobility of the figure and the speaking immediacy of the portrait, between erudite archaeological inspiration and affectionate realistic stroke. The statue was already ready in January 1814, but the dramatic collapse of the Napoleonic empire prevented its transport to Paris. Only in 1817, having now become Duchess of Parma and Piacenza, Maria Luigia managed to recover the sculpture left in Rome in the sculptor's studio, deciding to arrange it in the palace of Colorno, where she remained until 1848, when her heir, Archduke Leopoldo of Habsburg, donated it to the city, so that it would be placed in the niche of the Gallery that the sovereign herself had set up in the Palazzo della Pilotta, where it can still be admired today.

In 1524, having finished the works for the great decorative undertaking of San Giovanni Evangelista, Correggio was commissioned by the Benedictine monk Placido del Bono to paint two canvases for the family chapel located in the same church: the Lamentation over Dead Christ and the Martyrdom of Saints Placido , Flavia, Eutichio, Vittorino. In the Lamentation Correggio adopts a completely new iconographic solution: Christ, just taken down from the cross, lies on the ground with his head abandoned on his mother's lap, his body bruised, his feet and hands still contracted by the tension of the nails. The Virgin, unable to bear this excruciating physical contact, faints, supported by John, while Magdalene, at the feet of Jesus, regardless of what happens around her, is overcome by a feeling of painful sadness. The tragedy is definitively accomplished: the sacrifice of Christ is shown to us in the foreground in all its atrocious and human suffering, arousing in the viewer a strong emotional reaction and a feeling of sharing, painful compassion. The asymmetrical compositional scheme and the horizontal cut of the painting (a completely new solution in the Parma area) give the scene an intense pathetism, which anticipates the language of Baroque painting. Like a cinematic zoom, the artist focuses all attention on the central group, cutting out the details that are not functional to the dramatic climax of the story. The painting as its counterpart remained in its original location until 1796 when, following the Napoleonic suppressions, it was moved to Paris. Returning to Parma in 1816 it was placed in its present location in the rooms of the Rocchetta of the Gallery.

The altarpiece was made by Cima da Conegliano between 1505 and 1507, commissioned by canon Bartolomeo Montini for his own funerary chapel in the right transept of the Parma Cathedral. The painting follows the typical model of the Venetian-style sacred conversation, with the Madonna and Child seated on a high throne, surrounded by a group of saints arranged in a semicircle, to increase the effect of depth and the perspective curvature of the apse within which they are represented. The attributes that make their figures recognizable are just mentioned: on the left St. John the Baptist with the gaunt body covered in camel skins, at his side the doctors Cosma and Damiano in elegant clothes and with the small box of their instruments, placed on the base of the throne. On the right St. John the Evangelist with the book, St. Catherine with the broken toothed wheel and closer to the throne St. Apollonia with the tongs of her martyrdom barely visible on the throne. In the apse there is also a mosaic with the Deesis, which recalls that Byzantine tradition so alive in Venice. The light gradation conferred by the artist is very successful, seeing the saints on the right illuminated, while those on the left are slightly in half-light, in line with the real space of the chapel. Next to the musical angel there is a cartouche in which the name of Cima appears, but not the date, which can be traced back before 1510, the year in which Montini gave the testamentary dispositions for his funerary monument. The painting, one of Cima's most intense and intimate works, was requisitioned by Napoleon in 1803 to be transferred to the Louvre, returned to Parma in 1816 and was destined to increase the collections of the Gallery.

The interest contained in this tablet is twofold and concerns its author and the person depicted, who establish close personal relationships starting from 1523, the year in which Holbein portrays Erasmus for the first time in the painting now in Longford Castle, Earl of Radnor collection. , which will be followed by many other versions, including the very famous one preserved in the Louvre, probably intended for Thomas More and of which there are also preparatory drawings for the hands. Just as Cranach was Martin Luther's portrait painter, so Holbein will become the painter of Erasmus, determining an acquaintance and a mental harmony oscillating between vanity, lucid objectivity, psychological analysis and intellectual rigor, which transpire in the writings of one and in the paintings of the other.

The artist and the intellectual seem to proceed, despite the diversity of the expressive tools used, with the same open-mindedness, which will bring consensus but also fearful disagreements with the opposing parties. Holbein's painting will receive approval from scientists, merchants, ambassadors, as well as from the rich bourgeoisie, up to the court of Henry VIII (Roberts 1993), of which he modulates intense portraits, which will make him one of the most acclaimed German artists between '400 and' 500 for his interpretation of the portrait in profile, front, trocar and full-length and half-length, made with the determination to leave to posterity a realistic and unmistakable image of the various personalities portrayed.

In this capital, which represents episodes from Genesis, the story unfolds without caesuras and the succession of scenes is marked by the movement of the figures and the repeated presence of the tree with the Snake in an angular position. The narration begins with Adam and Eve being led into the Earthly Paradise: a young God, beardless and with long hair, dressed in a long tunic and cloak that falls over his shoulder, leads the naked Adam by the hand, followed by Eve. The narration continues with the episode of the temptation of Eve: the Progenitors, dressed in long tunics edged at the neck and cuffs made with a drill decoration, are seated on a historiated bench, behind them a small tree with three large leaves divides symmetrically the scene and sets it; on the one hand Eve with her hand raised near her face seems to listen to the tempting Serpent enveloped in the fruit-laden tree trunk, on the other Adam, sitting in a frontal position with a flower in his hand, does not participate in the "interview" that is taking place on his right. In the following scene, Eve appears offering the fruits to Adam, while the fourth side depicts the shame of the Progenitors after the sin committed: naked and shameful Adam and Eve are seated on the lower branches of the fruiting tree, according to an iconography that symbolically recalls the 'genealogical tree.

The table has as protagonists the Virgin holding baby Jesus in her arms and, at their feet and of smaller dimensions, four saints kneeling. The face of the Madonna has very delicate and elegant features, as well as the Saints, whose physiognomies are well characterized. Made by Beato Angelico between 1428 and 1430, the work has been deprived of its original carpentry and over time has undergone renovations that have compromised its integrity of reading: the space lacks definition, the Virgin and the saints seem almost floating on the gold background within a sort of niche without perspective. However, the solemn setting of the figures of Mary and the Child, the intense blue cloak that takes volume from the light and makes one perceive the plasticity and shape of the human figure, denote the great quality of the work, in which the novelties derived from the painting of Masaccio. More in line with Beato Angelico's own style is the gold decoration in the friezes, in the hems of the robes and in the thickly drawn motif of the precious fabric of the curtain with shades of red lacquer, the same used to give body to the fourteen seraphim graffiti in the line. of the frame. Purchased in Florence in 1786, the painting belongs to that group of masterpieces chosen by the Marquis Tacoli Canacci to increase the collection of Tuscan "primitives" of Duke Don Ferdinando and which constitute one of the oldest and most valuable nuclei of the artistic collections of the Pilotta Complex.

The very particular composition, which opposes the softly falling mass of the Sleeping Child to the moving and dynamic thrust of the figure of the Virgin, elongated upwards, is very reminiscent of the painter's works of the Palermo period, such as the Madonna and Child of Palermo, Galleria National Museum of Sicily and the Santa Rosalia of New York, Metropolitan Museum, in which the suggestion of Titian is interpreted in the light of a baroque affection and emotion deriving from that frequentation of Rubensian religious works that remained fundamental in the formation of author.

It is far from unlikely that even this Madonna, of which we know only the recent history, has followed a path of this sort, especially since she shows the greatest affinities with the Madonna of the Rosary (Palermo, oratorio del Rosario), commissioned in Palermo on 22 August 1624, but finished and therefore sent only in 1627.

The painting was located in one of the chapels of the Capuchin church in Parma, together with the paintings by Pittoni and Piazzetta, with which it was transported to France during the Napoleonic government, to return to Parma and join the Gallery collections in 1810. It was probably made between 1752-53, the year in which Tiepolo returned to Italy after a stay in Germany, and 1758, when the artist received the title of "amatore" from the Academy, which would later become that of "academic of honour" . The canvas presents two Capuchin martyr saints canonized by Benedict XIV in 1746: Fedele of Sigmaringen accompanied by an angel in the act of trampling on the allegory of Heresy and on his right Giuseppe da Leonessa in prayer, with his gaze turned towards the sky, both wearing visibly patched sais. The composition of the altarpiece is monumental and balanced, played on the contrast between the figures of the saints, with their dark robes, and the pale female figure of Heresy, half-naked on the ground, writhing in pain, with snakes coming out of her hair, an allusion to sin and the evil one. Behind the two saints, the entrance to a classical building can be glimpsed, probably a church, while a large, verdant landscape opens up in the background illuminated by a blue sky with large white clouds, which evokes other works by the artist.

This fresco is the central part of the apse with the Coronation of the Virgin and saints made by Correggio in 1522 for the Benedictine church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, where the artist had already done towards the end of 1519 the decoration of the dome with the Vision of St. John on Patmos. The choice of the subject is a tribute to Maria, patroness of the city, who in 1521 had protected Parma from the invasion of French troops. In 1587 the monks, for liturgical needs, enlarged the apse and in order not to sacrifice the Correzian invention they tried to transport it in solid form, commissioning Cesare Aretusi to make a copy for the new basin. The original, reduced only to the figures of Christ and the Virgin, later found a location with the Farnese in the Palazzo della Pilotta. In 1937, during a delicate restoration, the tearing of the plaster revealed the sinopia, the first draft of the subject carried out on the arriccio with a brown brush, still visible in the Incoronata gallery in the Palatine Library. The monumental figures of the two protagonists stand out in the fragment: the Virgin who with grace and naturalness crosses her arms to her chest, tilting her head towards Christ who imposes the starry crown, turning lovingly towards her mother, while the dove of the holy spirit underlines the sacredness of the gesture. Compared to the sinopia, Correggio's original idea was partially modified in the final fresco, revealing a long-thought-out solution, executed for large and confident brushstrokes, fully exploiting the purity and transparency of the colors, even for the shaded parts. .

The painting was sent from Rome in 1856 together with the other essays made by the painter. It is a small painting with the characteristics of a sketch that represents the study that Scherer shared in Rome with his friend the sculptor Giovanni Chierici, who was also the winner of a pensioner. Both artists are at work: the painter portrayed himself in front of the Alcibiades canvas, the sculptor, pictured on the right, sculpts the group with Hagar and Ishmael. The canvas was exhibited to the public in the same year, as was the sculpture by Chierici, and was drawn by the Society of Encouragement to Count Giovanni Simonetta, and finally entered the Gallery, after its purchase, in 1920. The more academic setting of the previous works here it is redeemed by a sort of more modern "reaction" which is less in keeping with the rigor of the design and the scholastic approach which has been repeatedly advocated by the Parma academics. What is striking about this small canvas, beyond any poetic and sentimental intentions typical of bohemian taste, is the way in which the artist conceives his atelier, portraying himself and his fellow sculptor at work, as in a pleasant scene of a genre rendered somewhat veristically, in which the preference for a rapid technique and a free composition lit by particular light-color effects are almost a prelude to those images of popular and bourgeois interiors, typical of his more mature production.

The painting executed by Alberto Pasini in Paris in 1864 and donated to the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma, depicts the sunrise in a vast region in the eastern deserts of Persia, on the road that leads from Shiraz to Isphan. In the foreground, where the nocturnal shadows still thicken dark, men and animals bustle among the lit fires of the bivouac, at the foot of a plateau that rises behind the camp, getting lost in an endless distance, closed on the horizon by a chain of purple mountains against the bright sky of the first light of dawn. Pasini expands the frame to the maximum to communicate all the sense of abandonment and luminous amplitude aroused in him by the Persian landscape, which much more than the figures, constitutes the true protagonist of the scene, restoring to the viewer the strong suggestion produced by the still vastness of the place. still asleep in contrast to the turmoil of the caravan preparing to leave. The references to painting rich in romantic and sentimental implications of the barbizonniers painters, who had influenced the painter's culture upon his arrival in Paris, are now completely outdated, in favor of a more analytical observation, which aims at an absolutely objective rendering of reality natural, devoid of picturesque compliments. Pasini's interest in oriental themes develops in close contact with the French cultural climate, already permeated for some time by the magical and adventurous charm of the lands of the East, but is enriched by the direct vision of extraordinary places, with shining colors , in the still and limpid light of the places, which he tries to transfer onto the canvas with a paint of solid coloristic impasto and a vivid and luminous palette, enhanced by strong tonal contrasts, marked by a subtle and very exact outline.

The bowl he gave to the work is the one with which the Virgin draws water from the miraculous spring to quench her son's thirst, while on the other hand Joseph has just picked the dates from the palm to feed him; at the bottom you can see the angel that ties the donkey to the tree, while at the top is a riot of angels on clouds sprinkled with a warm golden light, a divine light that seems to pervade the whole scene. The subject of the painting, commissioned by the Confraternity of San Giuseppe, which had the patronage of a chapel in the Parmesan church of San Sepolcro, depicts the Rest during the return from Egypt, as we understand from the age of the now grown Child, and derives from a passage from the apocryphal Gospel of the Pseudo Matthew: the intent of the clients to give particular prominence to the figure of Joseph, which in fact dominates the entire right half of the composition, is clear. In the calculated and skilful compositional orchestration, all played on the diagonal in which the protagonists of sacred history are arranged, what is most striking, as always in Correggio, is the extraordinary naturalness and the profound sense of humanity that emanates from the divine figures, that emphasis of the "affections" which will be one of the fundamental ingredients of the artist's fortune in the Baroque age. Similarly, the superb choir of angels at the top alludes to the extraordinary twirling of the angels in the heavenly vision of the dome of the Duomo, which Correggio was frescoing in the same years. The wooden ancona, carved by Marcantonio Zucchi on a drawing by the same painter, shows an updated old-fashioned taste, as well as the dedication and completion date of the work in 1530. Of course, this splendid panel was also requisitioned by the Napoleonic government and brought in Paris in 1796. It returned to Parma in 1816 and was exhibited in the rooms of the Gallery dedicated to Correggio's masterpieces.

This admirable altarpiece, called Il Giorno, by analogy with The Dresden Night, was conceived by Correggio in 1523 for Donna Briseide Colla, married to Bergonzi, who in 1528 assigned it to her own chapel in the church of Sant'Antonio in Parma. In 1764 the Duke Don Filippo bought it for the court, but in 1796 during the Napoleonic government it was brought to Paris. Returning to Parma in 1816, she was placed by Paolo Toschi, director of the Academy, in the rooms of the Rocchetta of the Gallery with a design project that gave worthy space to Correggio's masterpieces. Allegri conceives this Sacred Conversation by renewing the traditional icon of the Virgin enthroned, eliminating architectures to place the figures in a naturalistic scenario, where the Madonna is seated on a humble grassy boulder and a red curtain, diagonally, acts as a canopy. It is a domestic, intimate scene, integrally inserted in a landscape, where the characters communicate by intertwining gestures and looks and the Child is its fulcrum. On the left St. Jerome with the attributes that characterize him in his double robe, on one side the old hermit with a gaunt and neglected body, with an unkempt beard and long nails, accompanied by the legendary lion from which he removed a thorn from his paw, from the another is the father of the church with the scroll and the volume, which allude to the Vulgate, the Bible that he had commented by translating the original Hebrew texts into Latin. On the left, Mary Magdalene, the sinner, kneels before Jesus, turning her gaze towards him, an allusion to the tears with which she washed his feet in Simon's house, while she lets herself be caressed in her long, loose hair, a clear reference to her being a prostitute. Behind her, the mischievous figure of the child holding the jar of perfumed oils in his hands is San Giovannino, precursor of the coming of Christ. The landscape is reminiscent of Lombard and Leonardesque views, with the gentle decline of the horizon on blue-gray tones, a natural space where, albeit at a distance, the laborious work of the fields is depicted among temples with a classical flavor, while in the distance you can glimpse a mountain, perhaps the Pietra di Bismantova. Allegri in this painting reveals his maturity and his brilliant autonomy, which also reveals Leonardo's and Raphael's knowledge of painting.

Doyen's painting, exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1759, where it obtained flattering and favorable appreciation, constitutes the first important purchase of Don Filippo di Borbone for the court of Parma and belongs to that solemn genre of history painting that had had great interpreters in the France of the eighteenth century. The work presents, according to the narration made by Tito Livio, the moment in which the plebeian Lucio Virginio decides to kill his daughter Virginia, to save her from dishonor, avoiding handing her over to the decemviro Appio Claudio, whose behavior is condemned for bullying. perpetrated against the plebs. The death of Virginia was, in fact, the cause of a popular uprising against the decemvirs. Without any uncertainty Doyen proposes a lively development of the scene, animated by a sort of dramatic classicism, eloquent in gestural and expressive dynamics and characterized by a calibrated and functional palette for the narration. Particularly effective is the contrast between the decemviro Appio Claudio completely wrapped in a reddish halo and the gray-haired and pensive old man behind him. The calibrated chromatic agreement between the white-pink that characterizes the clothes of the innocent dying heroine, contrasted with the blue-red of the outraged betrothed, accentuates the dramatic tension and the sense of extreme pathos of the narrative climax. An equally refined direction regulates the accurate architecture of the background, the antiquarian details of the furnishings and costumes according to a philological attention that will lead to a new triumph of the subjects of ancient history and will be worth to Doyen the title of fashionable painter. The artist, together with Nattier, Julien de Parme, Liotard, Pecheux and Carl Van Loo, artistically represents that moment in the political and economic life of the Duchy of Parma in which France, due to the marriage between Don Filippo di Borbone and Louise Elizabeth , daughter of Louis XV, will have a particular cultural influence on the small town of the Po Valley.

Composition in gilded bronze depicting Apollo and Diana, understood in their meaning of Sun and Moon, resting on a rich base flanked by four other bronzes with seated women, representing the four elements Water, Air, Earth and Fire. On the sides, on two green marble bases, stand the bronze statues of Ceres and Bacchus, alluding to the fertility of the earth, surrounded by statues of donors. To complete this decorative ensemble, there are a series of bronze statuettes that personify the Seasons and the Months, embellished with gilded bronze attributes and resting on supports with the signs of the zodiac indicated, all interspersed with amphorae, craters, candlesticks, tripods and stone fruit bowls hard and colored marbles, inspired by the ancient. The Table Triumph was created by Damià Campeny, a Catalan sculptor who spent a fruitful Roman season between 1797 and 1815, with the help of a group of specialized craftsmen. We do not know precisely through which roads the amazing decorative complex, commissioned in 1803 by Antonio de Vergas y Laguna, ambassador to the Papal State for the seat of the Spanish Embassy in Rome, reached the Galleria in Parma. The precious furniture is however remembered for the first time in the Inventory of the assets of the Parma palace, drawn up by the will of the Savoy after the unification of Italy in 1861.

It is in the intimacy of a room in the Reggia di Colorno, furnished with furniture from France, that Baldrighi portrays the family of Don Filippo di Borbone. A drawing sent to him by his master Boucher, preserved in the Lombardi Museum, could be a suggestion for this challenging composition, but Baldrighi, whose signature we read on the floor, chose a personal solution, a parade of figures whose actions appear frozen, as in a photographic snapshot, while the artist's attention is focused on the iconographic fidelity and on the precise and precise description of each object, placed there to tell the daily life and customs of a ducal family. At the side of Don Filippo, the affable duke, intent on chatting is the Duchess Louise Elisabeth, daughter of Louis XV; standing, showing her own drawing, the beautiful daughter Isabella (who will marry the Archduke of Austria in 1760), while the two youngest children, intent on their childhood games, are the heir Don Ferdinando, next duke, and Maria Luisa, future queen of Spain. The picture is completed by the elegant and mature lady seen in profile, Madam Caterina de Gonzales, the Spanish governess, a discreet but authoritative presence, who oversees and supervises the life of the ducal family.

The painting consists of two superimposed planes: in the upper part we find the Virgin of the Assumption into heaven, surrounded by angelic hosts, while in the foreground we can recognize St. Michael the Archangel with the usual attribute of the scales for the weighing of souls tied to his belt, while fight with the devil. In the background are mountain landscapes, a turreted village and a representation of apostles surrounding the empty tomb of Mary, in which some flowers were miraculously born. The panel was made for the Cathedral of Reggio, commissioned by Duke Alfonso I d'Este to celebrate the renewed dominion over the cities of the Este duchy, lost to Pope Julius II in 1510. It is a rather complex work built for overlapping floors that critics have assigned to the collaboration of the two brothers: the Baptist is responsible for the scenes with the Virgin assumed with glory of angels, the Apostles at the sepulcher and the landscape. The figures of St. Michael the archangel, who imposes himself on the surrounding naturalistic environment, and of the monstrous demon, defeated at his feet, with the aggressive and grotesque face, the tail set on fire with yellow on the tip and the webbed ends, are born from an idea completely singular typical of Dosso Dossi's eccentric painting.

The painting depicts a watercourse crossed by a bridge almost identical to that of the Windsor view; on the road there is the Palladian basilica, on the right Palazzo Chiericati, both well-known buildings, one public the other private, of Vicenza. The gondolas, the cargo boats, the burchi, the macchiette tell us that we are in Venice, but only the typical curve of the canal, a glimpse of the Fabbriche Nuove, in an anomalous position to the left of the bridge (while they are actually on the right). suggests that the site is Rialto. The covered bridge derives from a table of chapter XIII of the third of the Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio, which the architect indicates as "a stone bridge of my invention", without mentioning Venice. The "veduta conceived", product of the revaluation of Palladianism in the context of that Venetian Enlightenment, which, soon forgotten or distorted the lesson of Alessandro Lodoli, tended to recover the sixteenth-century classicism, is of problematic dating.

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.