パドヴァの聖アントニオの幻視

Murillo painted this huge canvas in 1656 for a chapel of Seville Cathedral, where it still hangs, showing Saint Anthony of Padua kneeling as the Christ Child descends to him in a burst of light and angels. Its strangest chapter came more than two centuries later. In November 1874 the cathedral discovered that thieves had cut the figure of Saint Anthony clean out of the picture. A few months on the fragment turned up in a New York art gallery, where a dealer named Hermann Schaus recognised it, bought it for 250 dollars and alerted the Spanish consul. The saint travelled home by way of Havana and Cadiz and was stitched back in and restored in 1875. If you look closely, the seams of that repair are still visible in the canvas.