Die heilige Apollonia

In Seville in the 1630s Zurbaran turned out a series of female martyrs who look less like ancient sufferers than fashionable young Sevillian women dressed for a feast day. Saint Apollonia is one of them. She was an early Christian in Alexandria whose torturers knocked out or pulled all of her teeth, which is why she became the patron saint of dentists and of anyone with toothache. Zurbaran gives her a crown of flowers and a shimmering silk gown of yellow, pink and green, and in one hand she calmly holds a pair of pincers gripping a single extracted tooth. That grim little instrument is the only sign of what she suffered. Everything else is fabric, painted with the tailor's precision Zurbaran was known for.