The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua (Murillo)
The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua is a 1656 oil on canvas painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, commissioned by the chapter of Seville Cathedral as the altarpiece for its chapel of Saint Anthony of Padua, where it still hangs. It replaced an altarpiece by Bernardo Simón de Pineda.
During the French occupation of Seville in the Peninsula War, the cathedral treasury was sacked by troops under Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult. Murillo's Immaculate Conception and Birth of the Virgin were taken and Vision was almost also taken, but the town council proposed exchanging it for Nativity of the Virgin and so it remained in the chapel[1].
A thief cut out the figure of the saint in 1874 and offered it to an art dealer in New York, but the Spanish ambassador to the USA was able to reacquire the fragment, which was returned to the cathedral and added back into the work in 1875 by the restorer Salvador Martínez Cubells[2]
References
- ^ "Catedral de Sevilla: Capilla de San Antonio" (in Spanish). Retrieved 10 March 2019.
- ^ "Visión de San Antonio de Padua" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2012-02-04.
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