Saint Justa and Saint Rufina

The chapter of Seville Cathedral wanted a martyrdom. Justa and Rufina were potters who had died for refusing to honour a pagan goddess, and a scene of their killing was what the canons had in mind in 1817 for the altar of the Sacristy of the Chalices. The commission reached Goya through his friend Agustin Cean Bermudez, a scholar of Spanish art, and Cean argued them out of it. At that size, he wrote, the two sisters should stand at full height, calm and decorous, so that priest and congregation would be moved to prayer instead of distracted. He also made the 71-year-old painter produce three or four trial panels first. This one, in oil on red cedar, is the only one anyone has found. The finished canvas reached Seville in January 1818 carrying one thing this small panel lacks, the image of the goddess lying smashed at the sisters' feet.