It contains significant paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci, two of the most important masters of Italian Baroque art, dating from 1600 to 1601.

"His body was then transferred to the city, and given over for burial in a chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, which he had built for himself", states Burchard.

It seems an obvious choice that he built himself a chapel in the Pope's favourite church in a very prominent position in the left transept.

Probably it was modelled after the tomb of Pope Sixtus IV by Pollaiuolo or even more after other 15th century sculptural works in the city of Siena.

The bronze gisant is attributed to a Sienese sculptor, Giovanni di Stefano, a follower of Vecchietta, who was commissioned by the heirs of Cardinal Pietro Foscari and used a funerary mask for the modelling of the face.

[2] The patronage rights of the chapel were purchased on 8 July 1600 by Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi, Treasurer-General of Pope Clement VIII.

Cerasi's choice of the Assumption for the altar seems straightforward enough, while the other two paintings honoured the Apostles central to the foundation of the Catholic Church as well as popular Counter-Reformation themes of conversion and martyrdom.

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.

[10] 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.

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.

The intrados of the arch between the chancel and the anteroom is decorated with white-gold stucco panels with two putti holding a wreath (top) and angels playing the harp and the flute (above the cornice).

The frescos in the anteroom of the chapel depict the Holy Spirit in the central oval medaillon and the Evangelists with their usual symbols and helpful putti on a golden background.

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.

These are typical Baroque wall monuments with the carved busts of the deceased set in oval niches, curved broken pediments and long epitaphs.

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 benefactor of the public hospital of San Giacomo degli Incurabili, Paolo M. Martinez (†1833) was buried under the pavement,[18] but his monument was placed on the external left pillar.