The Recovery of the Island of San Cristóbal

In 1629 a Spanish squadron under Fadrique de Toledo put in at San Cristóbal, a small Caribbean island the English call St Kitts, on its way to escort that year's silver shipments home. The English and French who had settled there were driven off, their settlements destroyed and the planters deported. They were back within a year, and the peace Spain agreed in 1630 let them stay.

Castello signed this canvas in 1634, by which time the island had been in other hands again for years, and it went up all the same in the throne room of Philip IV's new Buen Retiro palace, on a wall of 12 victories. Fadrique de Toledo stands in the foreground with his baton of command, the Spanish ships and the burning fort behind him. His face and dress follow the way Juan Bautista Maíno had painted him for another canvas in the same room.

An old royal-collection number, 2674, is painted on the front. By 1814 the picture was no longer hanging anywhere. The royal inventory of those years lists it among the paintings taken down and stacked in a passage of the Royal Palace in Madrid.