Pentecost

In the early 1630s Seville held the Crown's monopoly on trade with the American colonies, and the merchants on that route had their own guild, the Consulado de Cargadores a Indias. Newly reorganised, the guild wanted a painting for the hall where its members met. Zurbarán gave them Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles, a subject that invited the traders to ask for the same guidance before they decided anything. The Virgin sits at the centre with her eyes raised, the apostles kneel around her, and small tongues of flame hang in the dark above their heads, under a dove in a break of light. When the American trade moved to Cádiz in 1717, the Consulado went too, and the canvas hung in its hall there until the 19th century, when it passed to the city's museum.