Apothéose de saint Jérôme

When Spain dissolved its male religious houses in 1835, the picture cycles Zurbaran had painted for monasteries were taken down and sold, which is how his Carthusian canvases from Jerez ended up in Cadiz and Grenoble. Guadalupe, the Hieronymite house in Extremadura, kept its own. He worked for it in 1638 and 1639, eight large canvases of the order's friars for the sacristy and three more for the small chapel that opens off it, and this is the altarpiece of that chapel, Jerome lifted by angels above the figures below. It is the only Zurbaran cycle still in the building it was made for. The monks were gone after 1835 and the place stood empty for decades, until Franciscans took it over in 1908, and the canvases were left hanging through all of it.