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Secondary sourcePainting

St Benedict exorcising a demon-possessed man

Lodovico Carracci

An etching after a painting by Lodovico Carracci showing Benedict performing an exorcism through prayer, a miracle from his traditional life story.

Shows a miracle attributed to Benedict in his traditional biography: exorcising a demon-possessed man through prayer.

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Black and white etching of a dramatic scene: a robed bearded man in the center reaches upward while a figure in a dark tunic and crowned headpiece steadies a struggling man. A kneeling figure lies on the ground at lower left, and onlookers stand at left and right in a hazy landscape. Signature text appears at the bottom corners.
Giacomo Giovannini after Lodovico Carracci, St Benedict exorcising through prayer a man possessed by demons. Etching, Wellcome Collection, London.

About this source

What it is

This is an etching by Giacomo Giovannini, made after a painting by Lodovico Carracci. It is held by the Wellcome Collection in the United Kingdom. It shows Benedict exorcising a man possessed by demons through prayer.

Why it matters

This scene comes from the hagiography, or traditional saintly biography, of Benedict, which attributes miracles such as this exorcism to him. Images like this, made long after Benedict's lifetime by artists such as Carracci and printmakers such as Giovannini, show how his reputation as a miracle-worker was passed down and visualised for centuries.

Look closer

  • What gestures and expressions in the print suggest the drama of the exorcism?
  • Why might this subject have appealed to artists and the people who commissioned such prints?
  • How reliable is an image like this as evidence for an event from centuries earlier?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Saint Benedict on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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