I miracoli di sant'Ignazio

Rubens painted this in Antwerp and it travelled to Genoa by sea, arriving in 1620 for a chapel in the Jesuit church there. The Pallavicino family, Genoese bankers, had already bought his Circumcision for the high altar of the same church, which is how the work came to him. When the canvas arrived, Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, was not yet a saint. Rome canonised him in 1622, and the painting lays out the case, the miracles credited to him gathered into one crowded foreground. A woman thrown backwards in the grip of a demon, a child brought back to life, an old washerwoman whose arm was healed. Ignatius stands above the commotion in vestments, entirely still, on a canvas more than four metres tall.