Saint Didacus of Alcalá

The friar in this picture is caught carrying bread out of his convent. Diego of Alcalá, who died in 1463, kept taking loaves from the table for the poor until a superior stopped him and asked what he had in his habit. He said roses, and when he opened it there were roses. That story was worth painting in 1658 because the Spanish crown had spent decades making Diego famous. In 1562 the heir to the throne, Philip II's son Carlos, cracked his skull in a fall at Alcalá de Henares, and the friar's preserved body was laid beside him in his sickroom. The prince recovered, the king pressed Rome, and Diego was declared a saint in 1588. The museum thinks Zurbarán painted this canvas soon after moving to Madrid, probably for the top section of an altarpiece in the saint's own convent at Alcalá. It later turned up in a private collection in Cádiz, was bought for the Prado in 1932 with money from a bequest, and reached the museum in 1936.