Plausibility or truth. Archival notes and reflections on the canvas of the ‘Militant and triumphant Church’ ascribed to Jacopo Zucchi

While retracing the traditional history of the painting, which was fi rst ascribed to Federico Zuccari and later to Jacopo Zucchi, the author hereby presents the long and painstaking research that has gradually confi rmed this second hypothesis. The reader will, therefore, fi nd a synthesis of the history of this painting, which was surely enough fi rst hosted in St Peter's Basilica, then moved to the Church of St Catherine of Alexandria and fi nally to the Vatican Sacristy. Based on a number of inconsistencies which emerged during archival research, doubts still persist with regard to the historicity of this historical-artistic tradition. Despite the fact that scholars are fi rmly inclined to ascribe the painting to Zucchi, some unpublished documents tend to undermine this assumption, while still implying that the painting might be by an artist of the Zuccari family