Saint François Xavier baptisant les Indiens

Painted in 1854 for the Musée Salies, this canvas depicting the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier baptizing indigenous peoples brings together the religious commission tradition with the Orientalist and exotic interests that ran through Chassériau's mature work. Francis Xavier had evangelized in India, Japan, and China from the 1540s and was among the most celebrated figures of the Counter-Reformation church; his life had been the subject of French religious painting since the seventeenth century. For Chassériau, the subject offered an opportunity to depict 'Oriental' or colonial figures in a devotional context, aligning his Orientalist practice with the religious commissions he increasingly received in his final years. The painting stands alongside his mural projects for Parisian churches as evidence of his seriousness as a religious painter — a dimension of his career often overshadowed by the Orientalist work. His death in 1856 cut short what might have become a substantial body of ecclesiastical painting.

The large canvas requires Chassériau to balance the elevated religious rhetoric of the central sacramental act with the descriptive specificity his Orientalist work demanded for surrounding figures. The composition is structured around the baptismal gesture, with the gathered converts radiating outward in attitudes of wonder and submission. Warm Mediterranean and South Asian color notes distinguish the crowd from the centrally placed European missionary.