Andrea de' Michieli (1536-1617)
St. Michael the Archangel

Ognissanti Church, Venice, Italy

This painting combines two iconographic types. At first glance it looks like a traditional portrait of St. Michael in battle array vanquishing Satan, here pictured as a human form rather than a dragon. But the devil's right hand reaches up in an attempt to cheat on the balance scale that Michael holds in his left hand – a reference to the so-called Psychostasy, the weighing of souls officiated by the archangel at the Last Judgment.

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Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.