Madonna del Rosario

The Virgin is entrusting Saint Dominic with a crown of roses as a weapon against heresy, while the kneeling saint raises a rosary and turns toward the viewer. In this painting, Domenichino creates a unified but complex and carefully pondered scene, where the central depiction with the Virgin and Saint Dominic blends with an iconography that refers to the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious “mysteries” of the life of Christ and the Virgin, distributed in groups around the centre and not isolated in independent scenes.