Cardinal Paolo Camillo Sfondrati (1560–1618) – chasing sainthood

Cardinal Sfondrati was one of the most influential figures of the Roman Church at the turn of the XVI and XVII centuries. He combined all the good and bad characteristics of this era of increased piousness and severity. Being the papal nepot, for a short while he had the opportunity to achieve everything a cardinal could dream of at that time as far as earthly luxuries, nevertheless he had to be satisfied with a rather lowly function of a presbyter of a church in the poor district of the Trastevere. And it was then that his ambitions exceeded the earthly sphere.

Saint Cecilia Distributing Alms to the Poor– a story of the recalcitrant Roman populace

Pierre Polet desired that his posthumous chapel be decorated with frescoes by Domenichino. There would be nothing extraordinary about this undertaking, had it not been for one of the painted scenes, which surprised and disgusted many of the onlookers. What was it that shook the public of seventeenth-century Rome to such an extent that this painting was on the lips of both the educated elites, as well as simple people? In order to answer this question, we must carefully look at the decorations of the Polet Chapel located in the right nave of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi.

Pope Gregory XIV (1535–1591) – pious, modest, and lacking in will

At the age of only sixteen, he was ordained as a priest, and at the age of twenty-five, he became a bishop of Cremona, to then become a cardinal at the age of forty-eight. And he owed it all to his aristocratic origins. At the moment of being called to St. Peter's throne, in 1590, cardinal Sfondrati was fifty-six years old. Ten months later he died, to the chagrin of his family, but also many other people who were able to appreciate the virtues of this modest, pious, but also bereft of political ambitions, successor of St. Peter.