Visione di sant'Alonso Rodríguez

When Zurbaran painted this in 1630, the man in it had been dead only a little over ten years and was not yet a saint. Alonso Rodriguez had spent decades as the doorkeeper of the Jesuit college on Majorca, a humble post for a humble brother who was said to receive visions of Christ and the Virgin. The Jesuits of Seville, who were pressing his cause, commissioned Zurbaran to show one of those visions. He divides the canvas almost like a set of shelves, the earthly kneeling figure below and the heavenly company above, with a small choir of angels playing to one side. The picture hung in the Jesuit house in Seville long before it ever reached a public gallery.