The Vision of Saint Paschal Baylon

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was the last great master of the bright, airy ceilings of Venice, and late in life he left them to work for the king of Spain. In 1767 Charles III set him to paint seven altarpieces for a new church at Aranjuez, the royal town south of Madrid. This was one of them. The subject is Paschal Baylon, a 16th-century Spanish Franciscan lay brother remembered for his devotion to the Eucharist, shown here in the vision of the sacrament his order treasured. Tiepolo finished the set and died in Madrid in 1770. This canvas went over the high altar, and it was the first to go: it was torn down soon after it was put up and replaced by one from Mengs, in the cooler, more polished Neoclassical taste the court had come to prefer. The others followed in 1775, carried into the convent next door. What survives of this one is two fragments, the angel holding up the Eucharist and the kneeling saint below him, mounted together again in the Prado.