Die heilige Elisabeth von Thüringen

Around 1640 Seville was still one of the richest cities in Spain, the port where American silver came ashore, and Zurbaran ran a workshop there supplying convents at home and across the Atlantic. This one was painted for a private house. It is half of a pair, and the pair is still together in Bilbao, the other canvas a Saint Catherine of Alexandria. Wealthy Sevillian families liked their daughters painted as the saint they were named for, in the clothes they actually wore, so the crown and the palm sit on top of a real young woman in expensive silk. Which saint she is has never been settled. Bilbao calls her Elizabeth of Thuringia, a 13th-century Hungarian princess remembered for feeding the poor, while other scholars read her as Saint Eulalia or as Elizabeth of Portugal. The provincial council of Biscay bought her from a Madrid collector in 1919.