St. Michael Vanquishing Satan
Dublin Core
Title
St. Michael Vanquishing Satan
Description
St. Michael Vanquishing Satan is created by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. The painting was commissioned by Pope Leo X. In the painting, the archangel Michael standing on top of Satan's back with his right foot, while holding a spear in his hands. It is a large-scale and mature version of a subject he had earlier treated in the youthful miniature called St. Michael. Both works have been located in the Louvre in Paris since 1667.
This painting has symbolic meaning within the Christian religion as it symbolizes God triumphing over evil. Raphael had a gift for creating images that evoked divinity in a subtle way and was known being skillful at creating space within his compositions as well as movement captured at a stand still.
In the painting, Michael stands on top of the devil with one leg while holding up his spear to deliver a strike to his head. His wings are depicted open while the devil's are closed signifying defeat. The ideal figures that he would create were done so not to overpower the image, but with grace and reservation. Author George B. Rose claims that, "Even though color wasn’t his expertise, Raphael always used it appropriately. His use of lines were masterful and had a decorative quality to them. Raphael had great skill in portraying space through his compositions and it wasn’t always tied to having a distant background. Regardless of the sense of space created, Raphael had an ability to juxtapose the vastness of nature with man’s dominion over it. Man is always dominant, and the land is subservient to man's will." Here man is portrayed as the master through the image of Michael and Satan is the subservient creature.
This painting has symbolic meaning within the Christian religion as it symbolizes God triumphing over evil. Raphael had a gift for creating images that evoked divinity in a subtle way and was known being skillful at creating space within his compositions as well as movement captured at a stand still.
In the painting, Michael stands on top of the devil with one leg while holding up his spear to deliver a strike to his head. His wings are depicted open while the devil's are closed signifying defeat. The ideal figures that he would create were done so not to overpower the image, but with grace and reservation. Author George B. Rose claims that, "Even though color wasn’t his expertise, Raphael always used it appropriately. His use of lines were masterful and had a decorative quality to them. Raphael had great skill in portraying space through his compositions and it wasn’t always tied to having a distant background. Regardless of the sense of space created, Raphael had an ability to juxtapose the vastness of nature with man’s dominion over it. Man is always dominant, and the land is subservient to man's will." Here man is portrayed as the master through the image of Michael and Satan is the subservient creature.
Creator
Raphael
Source
Anderson-Riedel, Susanne. “A French Raphael: Alexandre Tardieu’s Engraving after Raphael’s St. Michael Vanquishing Satan (1806).” Art in Print 6, no. 1 (2016): 27–30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26408644.
Vasari, Giorgio, and Jill Burke. The Life of Raphael. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018.
Vasari, Giorgio, and Jill Burke. The Life of Raphael. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018.
Publisher
Wikimedia Commons contributors, "File:Le Grand Saint Michel, by Raffaello Sanzio, from C2RMF retouched.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Grand_Saint_Michel,_by_Raffaello_Sanzio,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg (accessed December 9, 2021).
Date
1518
Contributor
Jenny Chen
Format
268 cm × 160 cm
Type
Painting
Coverage
The Louvre, Paris, France
Files
Collection
Citation
Raphael, “St. Michael Vanquishing Satan,” ARTHIST 256 - Italian Baroque Art - Fall 2021, accessed October 22, 2026, https://baroque.dahvc.org/fall-2021/items/show/365.