This paper explores the archaism, or retrospection, of altarpieces produced by Jacopino del Conte (1510–1598) and Marcello Venusti (c. 1512–1579) for Santa Chiara a Monte Cavallo (later called Corpus Christi al Quirinale), a Capuchin convent founded in Rome by the Arciconfraternita del SS. Crocifisso di San Marcello a Roma. Close examination of the surviving written and visual sources reveals that the Crocifisso recognized that, as a radical reform movement of the Franciscan Order of St Clare, the Capuchin sisters required a simple church with 1) uncomplicated and traditional altarpieces and 2) a devotional focus on the crucified Christ. The confraternity brothers Jacopino and Marcello were especially equipped to translate the sodality’s resolution to build the complex ‘senza pompa nel modo e forma del fabricare fanno per li scapuccini’ (without pomp in the manner and form of building that is done for the Capuchins) into visual form. Analysis of Jacopino’s Pietà and St Francis Receiving the Stigmata of 1575–1580 and Marcello’s Crucifixion of 1575–1576 demonstrates the Crocifisso’s keen art-historical, or stylistic, understanding, which enabled it to choose between different artistic modes to suit the different contexts of its art patronage, as required by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and thereby distinguished the sodality as a model art patron during the Catholic Reformation.