Saint Antoine de Padoue adorant l'Enfant Jésus

By 1675 Murillo was the most sought-after painter in Seville, and this was among the subjects his city loved best. The Franciscan friar Anthony of Padua, who had died in 1231, was said to have been visited one night by the Christ Child, who appeared on his open book and let the astonished friar hold him. Seville in the grip of the Counter-Reformation wanted exactly this kind of tender, intimate devotion, and Murillo painted the theme again and again for its churches and convents. Here he works in the soft, hazy manner of his late years, edges dissolving into warm shadow and the child lit against the friar's dark habit. A lily, Anthony's usual attribute, marks him as the friar of purity.