Friar Andrés de Salmeron Comforted by Christ

The monastery of Guadalupe, in the hills of Extremadura, began a new sacristy in 1636, and the monks sent to Seville for a painter. Their contract with Francisco de Zurbarán was signed there on 2 March 1639, for eight large canvases showing monks of that same house who had died two centuries earlier. Andrés de Salmerón was one of the 32 brothers who came from Lupiana in 1389 to found the place. He died in 1408, and the order's history, written by Fray José de Sigüenza in 1600, tells of Christ appearing to comfort him in old age. Zurbarán gave him a gaunt, entirely particular face, and a Christ who holds the cross in one hand and touches the old man's forehead with the other. All eight are still in that sacristy: when the monks were turned out in 1835 and the buildings left to decay, the paintings stayed on their walls.