In 1616, the Jesuits of Antwerp commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to create a monumental altarpiece celebrating the canonization of St. Francis Xavier, a missionary whose miracles and travels had electrified Catholic Europe. This modello, or preparatory oil sketch, is the very first vision of that grand project—Rubens’s initial pitch to his patrons, painted with dazzling speed and energy.

The finished altarpiece would eventually hang in the Jesuit church of Antwerp, but it is this modello that captures the artist’s raw invention, before the polish of the final work. The sheer number of miracles Rubens crowded into this small panel astonished viewers; as one early biographer wrote, "Rubens painted not a single marvel, but a tempest of wonders." At the heart of the scene, St. Francis Xavier stands in the tropics, his arm raised in blessing over a throng of the sick and dying.

Rubens chooses the moment when Xavier’s prayer brings the dead to life—a child stirs in its grieving mother’s arms, while others leap from their stretchers, healed. The crowd is a tapestry of cultures and maladies: a Moorish man clutches his bandaged leg, a woman with an infant reaches forward in hope, and a serpent writhes underfoot, symbolizing the saint’s power over evil. Rubens’s swirling brushwork and dramatic light recall the energy of Caravaggio, but where Caravaggio isolates his figures, Rubens binds them in a communal surge toward grace. The modello’s loose, vibrant handling reveals Rubens at his most experimental, working out ideas that would shape the final commission.

Its journey has been less dramatic than the miracles it depicts: likely retained in Rubens’s studio as a reference, it later entered private collections before finding its way to the Prado. Today, it offers a rare window into the creative process of the Baroque’s greatest storyteller, showing how Rubens mapped out not just a painting, but a spectacle of faith for a world in religious upheaval.