The Vocation of Saint Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga

The young nobleman Aloysius Gonzaga kneels before the Madonna and Child, renouncing his inheritance to dedicate himself to religious life. Guercino — “the squinter” of Cento — painted this grand altarpiece around 1650, filling it with the soft, golden light and monumental figures that made him one of the most admired painters of seventeenth-century Italy. The boy’s courtly dress and the celestial figures above him turn a moment of vocation into a drama of renunciation and grace.