17th century

This painting depicts the heavenly vision of Saint Francis of Paola (1416–1507), founder of the Order of Minims, a religious order committed to perpetual abstinence and acts of humility. The saint experiences a vision in which the word “Charitas” (meaning Charity) appears in an aureole of golden light, accompanied by cherubs. The word became the motto of the Minims, and appears on the order’s heraldic crest.

In the background, the saint appears again standing on a shore with two kneeling companions. This scene in the distance refers to a miracle in which Francis calmed a stormy sea and ferried the men across the Straits of Messina on his cloak after they had been refused passage on a ship.

The subject of the painting should not be considered simply in terms of its visionary and narrative elements, but as a representation of faith itself as embodied by Saint Francis of Paola. Elderly and bearded, he is humbly dressed and appears to bear the weight of his calling on his slender walking staff. He gazes at the message borne aloft by the heavenly host with a look of reverent awe and dutiful acceptance. The simplicity of setting, sober tonality, loose brushwork, and harmony of both material and divine presence, are all consistent with Murillo's late style and help to convey a scene of passionate spiritual appeal.

Before an altar with a crown on a large cushion, Queen Isabella the Catholic kneels in silent prayer. She kneels atop an ornate bracket with an empty escutcheon and a large crown in the center, flanked by various emblems and trophies including pomegranates, flags, suits of armor, and two nude men.

The study gives enough careful detail to allow a stone carver to accurately reproduce this proposed design for a polychrome marble statue of the Spanish queen. The calibrations, numbered one to six along the right side of the sheet, would have allowed another craftsman to judge the scale of the work. The careful shading down the right edge of the bracket and around the emblems that hang from it suggests that these areas should project further forward than the top portion of the design. The rectangular frame around the queen represents a shallow niche.

Pedro de Mena y Medrano produced the design for a statue for the main chapel of the cathedral of Granada. A pendant statue portrays Isabella's husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, who kneels opposite her. So popular were the two statues that they were copied for another cathedral, in Málaga.

Francisco Rizi made this complete decorative and architectural design for a cupola, a small dome of a church. The central compartment depicts the Virgin Mary and Christ seated amid clouds and framed on four sides by pairs of putti supporting balustrades. In the lower right corner, Rizi drew a prophet. Rizi was Madrid's major practitioner of illusionistic architectural painting, or quadratura, which Italian artists had introduced earlier in the 1600s. The building for which this design was intended is not known.

Surrounded by a diverse array of onlookers, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius kneels and prepares to raise the holy cross. Barefoot and clad in drab robes, Heraclius has abandoned his fine clothing in order to pass through the gate of Jerusalem with humility. Standing beside Heraclius and clad in a bishop's mitre and white robe is the patriarch of Constantinople, Zachariah. Around this central pair, several spectators have dropped to their knees at the sight of the cross. In 628 A.D., having recovered the true cross from the Persians, Heraclius appeared at the gate of Jerusalem intending to enter in triumph. But as he and his followers approached the gate, stones fell from the walls, blocking his passage. An angel appeared and told him that in his opulent clothes, he could not enter through the same gate that Christ had humbly entered riding on a donkey. The message of this story is clear: the kingdom of heaven is open only to those who have forsaken the riches of the material world. The Exaltation of the Cross, in the form of a narrative series, appeared in several early Renaissance frescoes. But it is a subject rarely represented in painting. Juan de Valdés Leal frequently used painted sketches to work out his ideas for large-scale compositions. This oil sketch was created for his last major commission, a monumental fresco for the church of the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville, Spain. This preparatory sketch highlights Valdés Leal's agitated brushwork, thick impasto, vivid coloring, and dramatic sense of movement. Such painterly spontaneity perhaps reflects the spiritual fervor of this famously volatile painter.