The story
Behind a plain white front in the Santa Cruz quarter of Seville lies a courtyard that was built for old men. The Hospital de los Venerables was founded in 1675 by Justino de Neve, a canon of Seville Cathedral and a close friend of the painter Murillo, as a home for elderly and poor priests. Its church is still part of the visit, its walls and vaults painted by Juan de Valdés Leal and his son Lucas.
The Focus foundation, a Seville cultural trust later backed by the engineering company Abengoa, restored the building in the late 1980s, and Queen Sofía reopened it in 1991. In 2007 it gained a new role as the Centro Velázquez, devoted to the painter's early career in his home city, before he settled at the royal court in Madrid in 1623.
Two pictures carry that story. St. Ildefonso Receiving the Chasuble from the Virgin, lent by Seville's city council, comes from his last Seville years. Saint Rufina, one of the city's two patron saints, a potter's daughter martyred in Roman times, was bought by the foundation at auction in 2007 for about 12.4 million euros, and it is catalogued as attributed to the young Velázquez.
