The Madonna with the Seven Founders of the Servite Order

Agostino Masucci · c. 1728

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

174.8 × 115.7 cm (68 13/16 × 45 9/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Masucci's luminous altarpiece brings together the Virgin Mary and the seven Florentine merchants who, in a shared vision on the Feast of the Assumption in 1233, abandoned their worldly lives to found the Order of Servants of Mary. Agostino Masucci was one of the most respected painters working in Rome during the early eighteenth century, trained under the great Carlo Maratta and deeply shaped by his master's refined classicism. His figures carry a characteristic softness — graceful, idealized, and suffused with gentle light — that places him at the intersection of late Baroque gravity and the emerging elegance of the Rococo. This composition, now held at the Art Institute of Chicago, exemplifies his ability to organise multiple figures around a devotional centre without losing warmth or intimacy. The seven founders were canonized together in 1888 by Pope Leo XIII, one of the rare instances of a group canonization in modern Church history, which gives this subject a particular resonance in Catholic devotional art. Our hand-painted oil reproduction renders every detail by hand on canvas — Masucci's soft drapery, the tender gaze of the Madonna, and the reverent postures of the founders — offering a faithful presence that print simply cannot match.