[1] In 1636 a debate between Sacchi and Pietro da Cortona, then the leading Roman painters, took place at the Accademia di San Luca, the academy of artists in Rome.

Like Sacchi, his paintings were inspired by the works of the great painters from Parma and Bologna: Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Guido Reni, Francesco Albani, and Giovanni Lanfranco.

Pope Alexander VII (reigned 1655–1667) commissioned many paintings from him including The Visitation (1656) for Santa Maria della Pace and the Nativity in the gallery of the Quirinal Palace where he worked under the direction of Cortona who selected him for this task.

[6] In 1664, he became the director of the Accademia di San Luca and, concerned with elevating the status of artists, promoted the study and drawing of the art of Classical Antiquity.

The fresco represents an allegorical glorification of pope Clement X Altieri and his nephews, which in a play on his name celebrates a central personification of Clementia, the Roman goddess of mercy.

[7] Unlike the nave fresco in the nearby church of the Gesu which Giovan Battista Gaulli was painting at the same time, Maratta did not employ illusionistic effects.

It was not, as his critics claimed, numerous depictions of the Virgin that earned him the nickname Carluccio delle Madonne or ‘Little Carlo of the Madonnas', but his gifted interpretation of this theme.

With a general decline in patronage around the beginning of the eighteenth century and largely due to the economic downturn, Maratta turned his hand to the restoration of paintings, including works by Raphael and Carracci.