St Ursula and the Virgins

Painted by Lanfranco at the commission of Giacomo Simonelli, this painting decorated Simonelli’s family chapel which was dedicated to Saint Ursula. In 1630 the church, Santa Marta in Vaticano, was destroyed to clear space for the construction of the Vatican’s Palazzo del Governatorato. A date of 1622 was proposed for the picture on the basis of stylistic analogies with Lanfranco’s Saint Margherita of Cortona, signed and dated by the artist in 1622 (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence). The Saint Ursula does not belong to the most refined and elegant phase of Lanfranco’s career (1618-20), but rather to a slightly later phase of around 1622-24. This protobaroque period for Lanfranco is characterized by a more robust and vigorous style that is a prelude to the artist’s full baroque work of 1624-25.

In the same years Lanfranco also carried out another work for the Simonelli family at Santa Marta, an altarpiece similar in typology and style to the Saint Ursula. Showing the Virgin and Child and Saints James and Anthony Abbot, the painting is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.