St Philip Neri

The over life-size statue of St Philip Neri was executed for sacristy of the Oratorians at Santa Maria Vallicella. The intimate setting of a sacristy argued against a grandiloquent attitude, and the statue was conceived in keeping with the amiable character of St Philip Neri. The saint gestures with his right hand in offering as he glances up towards the ceiling where Pietro da Cortona had painted the instruments of the Passion of Christ; with his left, he indicates a passage from the offertory of his feast day, which is held by a kneeling angel. Behind the noble simplicity of Algardi’s saint stand earlier religious works by Domenichino, Guido Reni and ultimately their common source: Raphael’s Bolognese altarpiece, the Ecstasy of St Cecilia.