Today’s saint Picture: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

There’s a Saint Aloysius church in Chicago, but it doesn’t have a Saturday Mass so I’m doing a picture instead of my nerd pilgrimage today. 

Aloysisus Gonzaga was one of the generation of Jesuits who entered when the order had become established after Ignatius’s death and, although born an aristocrat and the heir apparent in his family, he instead renounced his rights of inheritence to pursue a religious life with the Jesuits. Perpetually in poor health, he worked in a Jesuit hospital in Rome during a plague outbreak despite his personal revulsion at the sights and smells of the work. He eventually was infected with plague himself and died at the age of 23.

I’m still drawing on the iPad for this week’s picture, but I’m trying a sort of mock–wood cut approach, creating a black rectangle and then drawing on that in white.