Saint Ignatius Mission: The Cook Who Painted the Ceiling

Jesuit missionaries established Saint Ignatius Mission in eighteen fifty-four at the request of the Pend d'Oreilles people, and Native families soon settled around it. The red brick church that stands today was built between eighteen ninety-one and eighteen ninety-three. What makes it remarkable is what's inside: fifty-eight murals covering the walls and ceiling, painted in the early nineteen hundreds by Brother Joseph Carignano.

Carignano was not a trained artist. He was the mission cook. With a great deal of self-taught ambition, he covered every surface with scenes from the life of Christ and images of daily mission life.

The murals have a raw, earnest quality that no professional commission could have produced. The church sits against the backdrop of the Mission Mountains, open to visitors, with Carignano's improbable masterwork intact.