Friar Pedro de Salamanca's Premonitory Vision

One night in 1458, at about four in the morning, a friar at Guadalupe named Pedro de Salamanca saw a strange glow over the monastery's towers. He called another monk to see it too, and the community took it as a warning of great bloodshed to come. Pedro had been a weaver before he entered the Hieronymite order, and he went on working at the loom inside the monastery. Zurbarán painted the episode in 1639 for the monastery's sacristy. He keeps almost everything in darkness. A column and the outline of the cloister stand on the left, the stone lit by reddish flares. One friar points up into the night, and the other, behind him, stands with his hands parted and his mouth open. A verse in Pedro's praise below the canvas gives the year he died there, 1479.