St Michael the Archangel
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
Revelation calls it a great battle. Reni painted none: the sword raised over a devil already pinned under his foot, and above him a face taken from nobody.
He told Giovanni Antonio Massani he wanted an angelic brush, or the forms of Paradise, but could not climb so high, and searched in vain; so he painted the form settled in his idea. That letter is lost; Bellori quoted it in 1664.
Reni painted it on silk, not canvas. Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who built the church, lies at the altar steps under words he chose himself: dust, ash and nothing.
Sources: "San Michele e l'Arcangelo di Guido Reni", busonero.it, 2016 · Vella, Journal of Baroque Studies 1(3), art. A2 · Elisabetta Di Stefano, 'Bello e Idea nella teoria dell'arte di Guido Reni'. · Ingrid D. Rowland, 'The Divine Guido', The New York Review of Books, 22 June 2023. · Museo e Cripta dei Cappuccini, Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome.
And there was a great battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels.
Revelation of John 12:7 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 2,441 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.