At the end of 1606 Caravaggio is located in Naples, in the Spanish quarters, where he remained for about a year. The fame of the painter in the city was well known to all. Column I commended him to a collateral branch of the family: the column-Carafa, prominent members of the Neapolitan.

Here Caravaggio lived a happy and prolific period in respect of commissions, the most important, by a Croatian merchant of Ragusa, Nicholas Radulovic, was the Lady of the Rosary, the iconography of the painting was set by the client himself who at the end no longer bought the work, which was amended by the artist and placed in the Chapel of the Rosary in the church of the Dominicans. In this period, created one of his most important works, which will prove pivotal for the painting in southern Italy and for Italian painting in general, the composition, compared to the Roman paintings, is more dramatic and agitated, there are no longer a central hub the action. This will be a great stimulus for the next Neapolitan Baroque painting. The work in question is: Are the Seven Works of Mercy.