ABSTRACT
This chapter retraces the redistributions and reproductions of Philippine holiness through a series of movements both physical and metaphorical enacted in the Roman Oratorian milieu. It provides a more focused reassessment of how Counter-Reformation image theory worked in practice, via the case study of the proliferation and regulation of a specific corpus of imagery promoting the cult and canonization of Filippo Neri. The chapter interprets the audacity of Philippine iconography as representative of the common tendency shared by contemporary Beati moderni propagandistic images. It then examines surviving works on paper to reconstruct lost monumental Philippine painted altarpieces. The chapter draws attention to how the second Philippine altarpiece as reinterpreted in Greuter's 1606 engraving of Neri della Misericordia visualized, indeed created, the oscillatory state of the beato Padre's purported holiness. Neri and other Beati moderni, suffering scientifically verified cardiac afflictions, gave new form to centuries of exegesis and spiritual exercises, and were emblematically associated with the image-symbol of the heart aflame.
