The Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome

Granet conceived this subject during Napoleon's occupation of Rome, at which time Catholic religious orders were suppressed. The artist presented the seventeenth-century Capuchin church as it once was and would be again: a place of active devotion. Despite Napoleon’s anticlerical stance, the painting was purchased by his sister Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, for their brother Louis Bonaparte. He had seen it in Granet’s Roman studio, where it created a sensation at the end of 1814, prompting Pope Pius VII to grant the painter an audience. This is the first version of a composition that Granet painted multiple times for Catholic leaders following Napoleon’s downfall in 1815.