General congregation of the Council of Trento in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore

Painted seventy years after the Council, the large canvas ornated the funerary monument of the noble merchant Giovanni Armanni and of his second wife Maria Felicitas Rottenbucherin located in the choir of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The coats of arms of the spouses are painted in the lower right-hand section, next to a large scroll inside which a long inscription in German recounts the memory of the Council and the name of the client commissioning it. The other scroll bears the captions in Latin relating to the main figures painted in the picture. This is a totally new element compared to the previous representations of the Trento Council because, in addition to their qualifications, there are the names of the twenty most illustrious personalities. The composition is a faithful copy of a engraving of an anonymous engraver published in Venice in 1563, but adds to it the depiction of the church’s presbytery where one sees the 16th century high altar dismantled in 1631 to make room for the current one. In 1644, the statue of Our Lady with Baby Jesus that decorated the altar was replaced with the large painting of the Assumption by Pietro Ricchi.