San Buenaventura en oración

The scene reaches back to the longest deadlock in the history of the papacy. After Pope Clement IV died in 1268, the cardinals argued for nearly three years without agreeing on a successor, until the townspeople of Viterbo locked them in and tore the roof off the palace to hurry them along. Zurbaran shows the Franciscan friar Bonaventure, who helped broker the outcome, kneeling as an angel names the man God wants, while the cardinals confer in red at the right. He painted it in 1628 for the college in Seville that carried Bonaventure's name, one of a set that launched his career. He was barely 30, and already working in the plain, heavy, sculptural light that would make his monks and saints look carved rather than painted.