Saint Michael Casting Out Satan

Saint Michael Casting Out Satan at the University of Chester follows Reni's famous altarpiece of the same subject painted around 1636 for the Capuchin church of Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome — one of the most celebrated religious paintings of the seventeenth century, still in situ in the church's high altar. In Reni's celebrated original, the archangel's otherworldly beauty contrasts with the writhing demon below his foot, embodying the Counter-Reformation's insistence that good is beautiful and evil is ugly — a moral aesthetic that appealed to both theological rigor and artistic sensibility. Copies and variants of this composition were produced extensively by Reni's workshop and by later copyists, spreading the image across Catholic Europe and into Protestant collections through prints. The University of Chester's art holdings reflect the accumulation of objects by educational institutions over centuries, this Reni copy or variant arriving through donation or bequest. The composition's enduring influence can be traced through Lanfranco, Guercino, and ultimately into the nineteenth-century religious revival movements.

Dramatic vertical composition contrasts the archangel's upward-floating grace with Satan's downward plunge, using the full height of the picture surface. Michael's idealized beauty and luminous flesh tones are set against the dark, writhing forms of the defeated demons.