Saint Bonaventure's Body Lying in State

Francisco de Zurbaran was about 30 and just making his name in Seville when he finished this in 1629. It belonged to a set of large canvases for the church of the Franciscan college of San Buenaventura in the city. An older painter, Francisco de Herrera, had begun the cycle with scenes of the saint's youth. Zurbaran took over the later chapters, including this one, the body of Bonaventure laid out after his sudden death during a church council in 1274. Among the mourners stand a king of Aragon and Pope Gregory X. Zurbaran gives the dead friar's white habit a still, sculptural weight that would become his signature. The picture left Spain during the Napoleonic occupation and entered the Louvre in 1858.