Blessed Henry Suso

Zurbarán made this for a Dominican convent in Seville in the late 1630s, one of a pair of large saints set at either end of the church. It shows Henry Suso, a German mystic who had lived three centuries earlier, in the act his followers remembered him by, cutting the name of Jesus into the skin over his heart with a sharp stylus so that he would carry it always. He does it with a strangely gentle, faraway look, eyes lifted, a plain landscape behind him. When Zurbarán painted him he was honoured within the order but not yet officially blessed. Rome would not beatify Suso until 1831, almost 200 years after this canvas was finished.