Vision of Saint Francis Xavier

Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Ignatius of Loyola, spent the last ten years of his life as a missionary in India, the East Indies and Japan. In December 1552 he died of fever on Shangchuan, a small island off the south coast of China, while he waited for a boat to take him to the mainland. In 1622 the pope declared him a saint on the same day as Ignatius.

In Rome the Jesuits gave him a chapel in Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, the oval church of their novices, and Baciccio painted its altarpiece, the death of the saint, finished in 1676. This canvas, only about 65 centimetres high, is his study for it, made around 1675. Xavier lies in the foreground pressing a crucifix to his chest, while angels and cherubs gather to witness his agony. The figures are only sketched in, with quick strokes of warm colour and no detail, and the finished altarpiece departs from this sketch in several places.