The Pio Monte della Misericordia is a church in the historic center of Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, southern Italy. It is famous for its art works, including Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

's The Seven Works of Mercy

The Seven Works of Mercy (Caravaggio)

The Seven Works of Mercy , also known as The Seven Acts of Mercy, is an oil painting by Italian painter Caravaggio, circa 1607. It is housed in the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples...

.

A charity brotherhood (Pio Monte della Misericordia meaning "Pious Mount of Mercy" in Italian) was founded in 1602 by a group of young nobles, and initially sat in a small church built by Gian Giacomo di Conforto near the staircase leading to the Cathedral. From 1658 to 1678 the edifice was enlarged, also with the annexion of neighbouring structures, by architect Francesco Antonio Picchiatti, forming a complex with a palace and a renewed church.

The latter, at the high altar, houses Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy; there are also paintings by Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain....

, Carlo Sellitto

Carlo Sellitto

Carlo Sellitto was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.One of the most gifted followers of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio , Sellitto played an important role in the spread of Caravaggism to Naples and in the development away from Late Mannerism to a greater naturalism.The son of a painter...

, Fabrizio Santafede

Fabrizio Santafede

Fabrizio Santafede was an Italian painter of the late-Renaissance and early-Baroque periods. He painted in a late-Mannerist style. He was a pupil of his father, the painter Francesco Santafede, and later a pupil of Francesco Curia and Andrea Sabbatini...

, Battistello Caracciolo

Battistello Caracciolo

Giovanni Battista Caracciolo was an Italian artist and important Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio....

and others.