The enigmatic painting, one of the most important of the turbulent painter, fleeing from Rome after the conviction for murder, depicts with great realism, in an intertwining of characters taken from the street, the charity activities of the Entity, inspired by the Works of Mercy corporal. It is the first commission for the decoration of the Chiesa del Monte, paid 400 ducats. In a complex and revolutionary composition, the Madonna of Mercy with the Child is depicted above, supported by angels, while, below, the interlocking of figures, with their complex gestures, symbolically alludes to the Works of Mercy. In the scene, which seems to take place right in a dark Neapolitan crossroads, we recognize: on the right Cimone in prison suckled by his daughter Pero (feeding the hungry and visiting the prisoners); behind the prison wall advances a gravedigger carrying a corpse, of which only the feet can be seen, followed by a priest with a torch (burying the dead); on the left, in the foreground, a knight with a feather (S. Martino), sharing the cloak with the poor man, depicted from behind, and next to a sick man with joined hands (dressing the naked and visiting the sick); further back, a man with an emaciated face, with a shell on his hat (S. Giacomo), is welcomed by the man in front (hosting the pilgrims); on the far left, in the back, there is Samson drinking from the jaw of an ass (giving drink to the thirsty).

The work expresses, through a strong contrast of lights, a direct vision of reality, becoming a reference point for local painters, linked to a devout and late-mannerist painting, thus opening the new seventeenth-century season of naturalism in Naples. A picture that manifests, with the reality of actions, the feeling of understanding and compassion that makes you participate in the sufferings of others, in a totality of love and pain.

The subject recalls the work of Liberating the prisoners, an activity practiced by the Body for the release of prisoners for arrears in paying taxes, due to a condition of poverty.First great follower Caravaggesco, Battistello immerses the figures in the darkest setting: l the angel takes the incredulous apostle by the hand and accompanies him out of the prison while the soldiers, below, remain asleep. In the darkness of the vast background, the wings of the angel, a window and a door on the left are barely visible. Battistello, to the full understanding of the pictorial art of the master Caravaggio, is accompanied by a drawing and coloristic definition acquired during the period he spent in Rome and sixteenth-century references, such as the sentinels taken by Raphael, or the strong color of Orazio Gentileschi, visible in the silvery glows of the robe of the angel.

It works around the 1550s of the 17th century, before Luca Giordano joined the Ribera workshop. It consists of a pure exercise on the great Venetian themes of the 16th century, probably studied from the canvases that the painter's father haggled; the results, almost like a forger of the time, explain the unjust accusation made to Giordano of appropriating the style of others very easily.

This group of four canvases made by the Calabrese painter, is affected by the Caravaggesco background updated by Emilian painting and by the Venetian memories of Veronese. The paintings were certainly made after the painter's stay in Naples, in 1656, when he became the only spokesperson for local painting in a city now devastated by the plague.

Among the most sentimental works of De Mura's vast pictorial production, the painting illustrates the Holy Family resting during the flight into Egypt. The almost bucolic scene focuses only on one side of the composition where the three figures are gathered, who relate to each other with a play of glances. The setting, intimate and serene, is given by the tenuous twilight brightness, reinforced by some points of color: the pink flesh of the child, the usual pink and blue of the Madonna's robe, the ocher of the mantle of Saint Joseph and the red of the cloth under the pillow. Critics have compared the painting to the fresco done by the painter in the church of the Nunziatella, in 1751, which offers a chronological reference point.

The sketches were preparatory to the realization of the frescoes of the Seat of Porto in Naples, one of the five civil buildings in which the representatives of the city seats gathered, which were destroyed in the early 19th century. The canvases depict the people who watch frightened by the divine intervention that saves San Gennaro from the first martyrdom. A third sketch, in compliance with the will of the donee, was sold to carry out works of mercy, and today is kept in the State Museum of Stuttgart: it represents the main scene of the saint coming out of the furnace unharmed.

With the typical proud characters of the official portraiture of the eighteenth century, this painting, executed by the Genoese painter active in Naples in the twenties of the eighteenth century, was conceived as a counterpart to the equestrian portrait painted by Beltrano; in fact the character depicted, this time on a rearing horse, is a descendant of Carlo di Tocco. Leonardo, Prince of Acaja and Montemiletto, Vicar General of the Further Principality for Charles of Bourbon in the mid-18th century. This painting also comes from the collection of the CapeceGaleota Dukes, descendants of the di Tocco family, which merged into the Pio Monte della Misericordia collections thanks to the Carelli - CapeceGaleota donation in 1933.

De Mura performs the great fresco cycle with episodes from the life of San Benedetto, between the years 1738 and 1746, in the church of SS. Severino and Sossio in Naples; for this vast work, he made fourteen sketches, now preserved at the Pio Monte della Misericordia and at the Capodimonte Museum. De Mura is at the height of his pictorial maturity, characterized by great composure and academic rigor. Other sketches of the same cycle are the four & nbsp; Studies of Angels, in monochrome, still preserved & nbsp; in the Pio Monte della Misericordia collection.

This table is among the most representative objects of this Institute. The original seven-sided shape represents, with mother-of-pearl inlays, the Works of Mercy of the Pio Monte attributed to each Governor.Every Friday, as per the 1603 Statute, the Governors met, occupying the place corresponding to their office. Every six months one Governor assumed the next office and another ended his term of office; in this way the offices shifted from one 'segment' to the other, ensuring that during the term of three years and six months each Governor was in charge of all the roles of the Institution.

The work is the masterpiece of this painter who is inspired by the ways of Cesare da Sesto and Andrea Sabatini from Salerno, protagonists, in the South, of Renaissance mannerism which has its origins in Leonardo and Raphael. The inscription at the bottom by Jacopo Sannazaro suggests that the painting was originally found in the church of Santa Maria del Parto in Naples.

Baglione, official artist of the Vatican, sent the canvas from Rome, paid a good 120 scudi. In this work he blends his sixteenth-century and mannerist training with the naturalistic language of Caravaggio: despite the heated hostility between the two, in fact, this work is among the most Caravaggesque of Baglione's production.

When the chapel was rebuilt, in the second half of the seventeenth century, all the paintings already placed on the altars of the first chapel were preserved with the exception of that of Baglione, the only one to be replaced: in its place, in 1671, the Government of the Pio Monte della Misericordia had the Deposition by Luca Giordano exhibited.

The Spanish painter is among the highest Caravaggesque expressions in Naples, in the full seventeenth century. Ribera portrays the Saint from the waist up and, as often happens in his painting, reinforces the expressive data especially in the face, with the eyes turned upwards and the lips parted. From the dark background the iconographic attributes of the Saint are barely recognizable: the stick and the bell. The Caravaggesque technique is taken to its extreme consequences by means of flashes of light that thicken up on the pictorial surface.