L'apoteosi di san Tommaso d'Aquino

Zurbaran painted this large altarpiece in 1631 for the Dominican college of Saint Thomas in Seville, and it was the picture that sealed his reputation. That same year the city fathers, over the objections of the painters' guild, invited him to settle in Seville as its leading artist. The scene stacks two worlds. Above, Thomas Aquinas rises among the Doctors of the Church with Christ and the Virgin, while below kneel the college's founder and the emperor Charles V, men from different centuries brought together for the occasion. On a table at the centre lies a parchment, and among the signatures painted on it Zurbaran put his own name and the date. It stayed the biggest thing he ever composed, close to 5 metres tall.