On the basis of fresh documentary evidence it has been possible to define with greater precision the dating of the bronze by Alessandro Algardi representing 'Saint Michael defeating the Devil'. The work, today in the Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna, arrived at the Olivetan monastery of San Michele in Bosco in the spring of 1652, together with the abbot Taddeo Pepoli. It must have been the Bolognese monk himself, elected father general of the order just one year earlier, who sponsored the making of the bronze, as Giovan Pietro Bellori mentions in his biography of the great sculptor. For that matter his request might well be in in keeping with a fairly widespread practice of patronage within the Olivetan community.
Archival documents reveal that various abbots who succeeded one another in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries paid homage to the monasteries of their city of origin by making donations or promoting the realisation of new works of art. A study of the figure of Taddeo Pepoli, with particular focus on his movements during the early 1650s, has also enabled us to identify new information about the painter Domenico Maria Canuti. The latter was in fact a favourite of the abbot, who had encouraged his artistic education and provided for his sojourn in Rome, where the Bolognese artist is mentioned among Pepoli's entourage in 1651. A second document also now confirms Canuti's presence between Rome and Naples, again in the retinue of his protector.