The Miracles of Saint James the Greater (1726): Art, History and Details

The Miracles of Saint James the Greater (1726) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Noël Nicolas Coypel (French, 1690–1734).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Noël Nicolas Coypel combined two stories associated with Saint James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles of Christ. In the foreground is the magician Hermogenes, begging forgiveness. Hermogenes had cast a spell on James, but the saint turned the curse back on him. When James offered to protect Hermogenes against the demons assaulting him, the magician cast aside his pagan texts in favor of Christianity. According to the second legend, James miraculously cured a paralytic man (in the middle ground at right), thereby averting his own execution and causing the prosecutor to convert. Although this painting is relatively small, the clear composition, grand architectural setting, and dignified and expressive poses of the figures endow it with monumental presence.

Object facts

• Title: The Miracles of Saint James the Greater
• Date: 1726
• Creator attribution: Noël Nicolas Coypel (French, 1690–1734)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 129.5 x 107.5 x 10.5 cm (51 x 42 5/16 x 4 1/8 in.); Unframed: 102 x 80.7 cm (40 3/16 x 31 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - French 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1929.96

Collection credit

Gift of Felix Wildenstein

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Cleveland." ARTnews (May 11, 1929): 22.
• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Héritage De France; French Painting 1610-1760. Montreal: Museum of Fine Arts, 1961.
• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 3. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.