DOMENICO ANTONIO VACCARO        Neapolitan, 1678-1745        Madonna delle grazie (Virgin and Child with Saints), c. 1730        Oil on canvas        Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts        Sarah C. Garver Fund, 1977.129

     Jesuit missionaries traveled not only to lands distant from Europe, they also went to parts of Europe considered in need of evangelization. Though not far from Rome, southern Italy was one such place. Works of art depicting Xavier give evidence of the spread of devotion to him. Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (1678-1745), a Neapolitan painter, placed Saint Francis Xavier on a par with Saint Sebastian in his painting Madonna delle Grazie (Madonna of Graces), or Virgin and Child with Saints. Painted about 1730 as a study for a large altarpiece in the church of Madonna delle Grazie in Marigliano, a town near Naples, this painting shows Xavier as an intercessory saint, calling on Mary and Jesus to show mercy to the town, most likely in a time of plague. By the early eighteenth century, Francis Xavier had become a very popular saint in southern Italy, especially in times of epidemics and other calamity; his pairing with Sebastian (easily identified by an arrow) associates him specifically with intercession in time of plague. Vaccaro not only completed the full-scale altarpiece—which is still in the church—but produced several other paintings as well for the same church, including a painting of Francis Xavier preaching.