A Visão do Espírito Santo de Santa Teresa de Ávila

Teresa of Ávila had been dead for over 30 years when Rubens painted this, and in 1614 Rome was in the middle of raising her toward sainthood. She was beatified that very year, and canonised eight years later. Rubens, back in Catholic Antwerp and the busiest painter of the Counter-Reformation, was exactly the man to give her story an image. He took the scene from Teresa's own memoir: on the eve of Pentecost she saw the Holy Spirit descend as a dove with wings like mother-of-pearl. She kneels in her brown Carmelite habit, hands open, caught at the instant of the vision. Rubens painted the subject at least three times, and this is one of those versions.