Saint Gregory the Great, Pope

These are the years when Goya was finishing the Caprichos, the 80 etchings he put on sale in Madrid in 1799 and withdrew soon afterwards. In the same stretch, from about 1796 to 1799, he painted four tall canvases of the Fathers of the Latin Church, probably around his stay in Seville in 1798, and their soft light owes something to the Murillos he saw there. This one is Gregory the Great, the pope who sent the mission that converted the English and whose name was later attached to plainchant. The four have long been scattered: Ambrose is in Cleveland, Jerome in Pasadena, Augustine in a private collection in Madrid. This canvas came to the Museo del Romanticismo with the founding gift of the Marques de la Vega-Inclan, and hangs in the oratory, the small room a well-off Madrid house kept for private prayer.