Saint Francis Xavier in a Garland

The Prado dates this canvas between 1635 and 1651. Francis Xavier had been dead since 1552, when he died on an island off the Chinese coast waiting for a passage inland that never came, and a saint since 1622.

In the middle of the flowers he is painted to look like a carved marble relief, which is how the museum's older catalogues describe him. It was not obvious to everybody who he was. A label on the back of the frame calls the picture flowers with Saint James in a medallion. Around the figure Seghers set jasmine, orange blossom, pomegranate flower, irises, a thistle and an artichoke head among the roses and tulips.

When the royal pictures were valued in 1834, after the death of Ferdinand the Seventh, this one was put at 12,300 reales. The other Seghers garlands in the same inventory were entered at between 1,240 and 4,080.

In 1999 the canvas travelled to Japan for an exhibition on Xavier's life, shown first at Yamaguchi and then in Tokyo. Xavier had come to Yamaguchi in 1551 and been given leave to preach there by its lord.