Raffaello Sanzio, Madonna di Foligno, oil on wood, Vatican Museums

It was commisioned at the end of 1511 by Sigismondo Conti, secretary and friend of Pope Julius II as a votive offering. In the central background there is the city of Foligno and the commitent house saved by the fall of a meteor or a globular lightning.

Giorgio Vasari describes the artwork on the altar of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome where Sigismondo was buried when he died in February 1512. He is portraied on the right, knelling, near his patron saint Gerome.

The angel in the foreground keeps an empty tablet. Sigismondo died before was able to comunicate to the artist the text to inscribe.

On the left St. John the Baptist shows to the spectator the apparition of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis, with his gesture, intercedes for the believers.

In 1564 the heirs of Sigismondo moved it to Foligno, city which gives the name to the piece of art.

It was stolen by Napoleon, subject to an invasive restoration during which was moved on canvas and after the defeat came back in the State of the Church remaining in the Vatican Collection where we see it now. 

Bibliography: Pierluigi De Vecchi, Raffaello, Rizzoli, 2002.