La visione di san Pietro Nolasco

In 1628 the pope, Urban the Eighth, made Peter Nolasco a saint. He was the medieval founder of the Mercedarians, an order that raised money to ransom Christians held captive in North Africa, and a new saint needed pictures. So the friars in Seville commissioned a whole series on his life, and this was one of two that Zurbaran, then about 30 and just making his name in the city, painted for them in 1629. It shows Nolasco asleep, dreaming. An angel stands at his side and points him toward the walled, gated city of the Heavenly Jerusalem from the Book of Revelation, glowing in the upper corner. Of the more than 20 canvases the order ordered for the occasion, only about 11 survive, this one among them.