Saint Francis in Ecstasy

Saint Francis is ill and in pain, and an angel plays the lute to him. The episode comes from the life of the saint written by Bonaventure in the 13th century, which tells how heavenly music eased Francis's suffering as he meditated. In the Catholic Netherlands of around 1630, that gentle, inward kind of holiness suited the times, and Francis, marked with the wounds of Christ, was among the saints the Counter-Reformation most liked to see painted. Van Dyck made this canvas for the Jesuit college at Mechelen, the seat of the archbishop of the Southern Netherlands. The museum acquired it from that college in 1776.