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Van Dyck's art appeared to be a suitable medium not only for sentimental portrayals of the Passion, responding so well to the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, but also for other subjects in which he illustrated the same spirit in a penetrating manner. With Van Dyck the triumphal glorification of the Virgin and saints acquires a quite individual interpretation in such works such as the Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph, painted for the Jesuit monastery in Antwerp.
Joseph Hermann lived in Cologne in the 13th century. He was a monk to whom the Virgin Mary appeared several times in his visions.
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