Death of Saint Francis Xavier, holding a crucifix and looking at the sky; angels and cherubs emerging from the clouds. Etching by the Comte de Caylus and woodcut by N. Le Sueur after L. Gimignani.

"The iconography of the saint's death on Sancian Island goes back to the Portuguese painter André Rainoso's cycle at São Roque in Lisbon (1619) and was standardised in Rome in the 1670s by Pietro da Cortona, Ciro Ferri, Baciccio and Carlo Maratti into a scene of the recumbent saint on a mat of reeds with his hands crossed --usually over a crucifix as originally was the case with the Santiago version--and his eyes closed in death or raised heavenwards in ecstasy"--Baily and Guzman, loc. cit.