The oblong shaped chapel consists of a sail-vaulted anteroom and a narrower, barrel-vaulted chancel with the altar. The space is lit dimly by light coming through a lunette window on the back wall. The arched entrance is closed by a balustrade of colourful marble. The focal point of the architecture is the altar. It was built of white and colourful marble in the shape of an
aedicule adorned with two large Corinthian columns, two half-pilasters and a broken pediment. The Cerasi coat-of-arms is depicted in the center of the stained glass lunette window. From the outside the chapel is invisible because it is hemmed in by the neighbouring parts of the basilica and a narrow, walled courtyard. The architect skillfully maximized the very small space left between the presbytery (on the right) and the 16th-century
Theodoli Chapel (on the left), and created the impression of "a miniature Latin-cross church, complete with transept, domed crossing, and choir. The nave [...] is supplied by the visitor's motion, his sense of direction and focus". Caravaggio's dramatically lit and foreshortened paintings are intended to be viewed from the side rather than straight-on, and draw the eye to Carracci's frontally presented
Assumption, so that the chapel is aesthetically united despite the very different styles of the two artists. According to Steinberg the light on the Caravaggio paintings comes from the painted heaven on the vault of the anteroom, inhabited by the dove of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, Varriano claims that the "source" of the light seems to be the clerestory window across the transept. The chapel is decorated in exuberant Baroque style. The frescos on the short barrel-vault of the chancel depict the
Coronation of the Virgin (central medaillon) and the visions of Sts Peter and Paul,
Domine quo vadis and
Saint Paul Transported to the Third Heaven (side panels), both set in rich gilded stucco frames. The frame of the central medaillon is held by four stucco
putti. The paintings were executed by
Innocenzo Tacconi, an able assistant of Annibale Carracci, and at least the coronation scene was designed by Carracci himself. This is proved by a detailed preparatory drawing of the figure of Christ in almost the same position as in the executed fresco which was preserved in the
Louvre. A far less elaborate sketch of the meeting of Christ and St Peter in front of a city gate, which was made for the Domine quo vadis panel by Carracci, was identified by
Hans Tietze in the collection of the
Albertina. Baglione identified the right-hand panel as Paul in Third Heaven (mentioned in the Second Letter to the Corinthians) while others believe it represents Christ ordering Paul to leave
Jerusalem (Acts 22:17–21) or even a synthesis of the two episodes. The setting of the fresco is celestial with Christ surrounded by angels and reclining on clouds. On the right is the constellation of
Ursa Major, perhaps a hidden signature of Annibale, playing on the assonance of the word
carro (meaning cart, the constellation is also known as Grande Carro in Italian) and his own surname, Carracci. Iconographically the side panels "relate to the Caravaggio paintings in that they manifest the divine cause of what passes below" them. Similarly the Coronation scene is placed above Carracci's Assumption as a direct continuation. The vault forms a celestial zone in close contact with the three famous paintings below. The attribution is generally accepted by modern scholars. Two preparatory studies for the lunette paintings are preserved in the
Louvre. Four golden putti in the spandrels seem to support the vault. As Giovanni Battista Ricci was a dependable but rather mediocre artist compared to Carracci and Caravaggio, Tiberio Cerasi's heirs probably chose him to complete the unfinished chapel in a quick and economical way. There are funeral monuments on the lateral walls of the anteroom, one for Tiberio Cerasi, the founder of the chapel on the left and another for his father, Stefano Cerasi (†1575) and his mother, Bartolomea Manardi on the right (†1573). These are typical Baroque wall monuments with the carved busts of the deceased set in oval niches, curved broken pediments and long epitaphs. The projecting heads are turned towards the altar. The monuments have painted backgrounds with rich draperies and flaming urns. The tomb itself, where his father, mother and brother had been buried, was mentioned in Tiberio Cerasi's will in 1598; it was probably located under the floor of the transept. The 19th-century Neoclassical tomb of Teresa Pelzer, a young German woman from
Aachen and the wife of Count Antonio Cerasi, was inserted into the wall under the monument of Tiberio Cerasi. She died in 1852 at the age of 27 in childbirth and her baby died with her. Their sculpture was created by Giuseppe Tenerani who finished the monument in 1857. The Latin inscription on their grave says: Post tenebras spero lucem (After Darkness I Hope Light). Teresa Pelzer is portrayed sleeping on her bed, and she is holding her dead child on her breast. The benefactor of the public hospital of
San Giacomo degli Incurabili, Paolo M. Martinez (†1833) was buried under the pavement, but his monument was placed on the external left pillar. ==Gallery==