On the vault of the altar, around 1661, Francesco Allegrini painted the Glory of the Paradise. Baldinucci had described it as an interweaving of Angels, pouring flowers, a great art: as still in some figures, representing Sibyls, made as an ornament of the picture

of the High Altar (…). The painting is Federico Barocci’s Annunciation, which with the Latin
inscriptions of the Sibyls prophesy the divine conception. Mary’s virginity, and thus purity, are exalted through numerous crowns of white flowers carried by the soaring angels, and by the glow of light that pervades the fresco. Two angels above the altar hold ovals that
illustrate the concept of the scroll. Some Sibyls, placed at the corners of the composition, celebrate the Virgin, in a riot of festive putti and angelic figures in

multicolored robes, swollen with airy drapery. Four of the five joyful mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary are depicted in the vault, namely the Annunciation (recognizable in the lower left), the Birth of Christ (the only one most clearly recognizable, in the upper left, where the Magi are sensed, and the cartouche also indicates this), the Presentation in the Temple, the Visitation (lower right, reading the cartouche) and Jesus among the doctors. The composition and style hark back to the triumphs of Pietro da Cortona’s vaults, in keeping with the Baroque tendency to open large heavenly spaces in which to exalt precepts and dogmas of the Catholic Church. A tendency confirmed by Francesco Allegrini in Santa Maria dei Laici, where the glory of heaven opens in the name of the Virgin Mary in this large fresco.