Painting of Saint Anthony of Padua

The painting under consideration is a small-scale copy of the monumental canvas entitled The Vision of Saint Anthony (La visión de San Antonio), preserved in the chapel of the same name in Seville Cathedral (catedral de Sevilla) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in 1656.

This reduced-format copy faithfully preserves the chromatic and compositional qualities of the original work, and bears witness to the pedagogical methods employed by the Sevillian Academy of Painting (academia sevillana de pintura) during the nineteenth century, particularly in the Isabelline period and the Bourbon Restoration . Such training was based, to a significant extent, on copying works by the great masters — in this case, Murillo — for purposes that were clearly oriented either towards commercial circulation or devotional use, as appears to be the case here.

The painting is placed where the so-called Saint Anthony of the Portuguese (San Antonio de los portugueses) was formerly venerated, an image that was destroyed in the Church of San Juan de la Palma during the disturbances of 1936.

The work is set within a simply profiled corla-gilded reed moulding (caña de oro corlado) and remains in an acceptable state of conservation.