Saint Charles Borromeo Venerating the Relics

Louise Smith Bross, who died in 1996 at the age of 57, was a longtime member of the Woman’s Board of the Art Institute and one of the founders of both the Auxiliary Board and the Old Masters Society. In 1994 she received her doctorate from the University of Chicago with a dissertation, “The Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia: A Study in the Development of Art, Architecture, and Patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome.” The eight drawings that her husband, John Bross, proposes now to give in her memory are vivid reminders of Louise’s work on late-16th-century Roman decorative cycles. In particular, she brought light to bear on Livio Agresti, a pupil of Perino del Vaga (1501–1547), one of Raphael’s closest assistants who continued his master’s work after his death in 1520. Agresti undertook a number of important projects at the Vatican for Pope Gregory XIII as well as for the Roman churches Santa Caterina dei Funari and Santo Spirito in Sassia.