The Institution of the Rosary

This relief panel shows Christ crowning the Virgin as the Queen of Heaven. Both figures are supported by angels; they are flanked by more angels holding rosaries, or strings of beads used to count prayers, in honor of the Virgin and celebrating events in her life. This bronze was probably fashioned by a Venetian artisan conversant with the relief style of Jacopo Sansovino, and thus it appears in a type of frame common for late-16th-century devotional works, complementing the stylized nature of the heavenly scene.