SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER
by Andrea Pozzo
[30 Nov 1642 – 31 Aug 1709]
1701
After
the liberation of Hungary from the Turkish occupation, the church of Our Lady
in Buda Castle passed into the ownership of the Society of Jesus. Their annals
referred as early as 1701 to a "new and elegant" altarpiece of St. Francis Xavier,
while a minute record from 1710 also describes the subject of the picture and
its great artistic value. In this latter notice it is also mentioned that the
altarpiece was painted by the greatly loved member of the order, the highly gifted
Andrea Pozzo. The note about this brilliant and versatile Baroque artist (he was
a painter, drawer, aquarellist, architectural designer, as well as an art theoretician),
written in the year following his death, should be taken as fully authentic. It
is inspired by the pleasure the Jesuits of Buda felt with the possession of at
least one work of art from his splendid oeuvre.
The picture represents one of the most glorious
successes of St. Francis Xavier as a Jesuit missionary in India: the very moment
of his baptizing Queen Neachile of India, an eminent member of the royal family,
giving her the name Isabella. Until then the Queen, a devout adherent of the ancient
Indian religion, had been a most stubborn enemy of the Cristian faith, so her
conversion was regarded as a singular achievement of Cristian missionary work
in the Far East. In Pozzo's oeuvre there are also some other variations on the
same theme. In the Buda altarpiece the main figures of the scene are brought into
relief by a monumental shaping; the modelling of light and shadow lays emphasis
on the moment of administering the sacrament. The balance of the composition is
given by a kneeling boy who holds a baptismal bowl in his hands — a figure
entirely absent in the other variations.
