The Nun Jerónima de la Fuente

In the summer of 1620 an elderly Franciscan nun, Jeronima de la Fuente, was waiting in Seville to board a ship. She was 66 and bound for Manila, halfway around the world, to found the first convent of her order in the Philippines. In those waiting weeks she sat for a local painter barely 21 years old, Diego Velazquez, still years from his move to the royal court in Madrid. He gives her no softness. She stares straight out, thrusting a crucifix toward the viewer, gaunt and completely resolved. Along the bottom an inscription records her mission and the day she set out to make it, Tuesday, 28 April 1620.