Final session of the Council of Trento in the Cathedral of Saint Vigilius

The two paintings were gifted to the Cathedral in 1711 by the canon Carlo Ferdinando Lodron to fulfil a vow pronounced in 1703 to avert the invasion of the city by the French troops of General Louis Joseph Vendôme during the Spanish succession war.
The votive character of the two images is declared in the inscriptions written in the inserts at the bottom, in which also appears a sort of numbered legend with references to the figures depicted in the stands.
Painted more than one century after the Council event, one must consider them the result of imagination. They are, however, of considerable historic interest since they faithfully reconstruct the internal layout of the cathedral prior to the transformations of the 1740’s. In the paintings the cathedral still shows the Romanic presbytery rising above the arches accessing the Saint Massenza crypt that will be suppressed with the construction of the large altar. To the left one also sees the outlines of the ancient organ and of the choir.