The Virgin Mary, clad in a red robe and blue mantle, holds the Christ Child and hovers on a bank of clouds over a group of souls in purgatory, who seek her intercession for their release. Nearby, a putto holds a brown scapular, a Carmelite symbol of devotion to Mary.

Over the course of a long career, Luca Giordano painted thousands of pictures and earned the nickname Luca fa presto (Luca works fast). Sometimes accused of painting too fast, Giordano acknowledged that he used “three sorts of brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and one of copper,” a metaphor for three levels of quality and price.