Sevillian school; late seventeenth century.

Sevillian school; late seventeenth century.
"San Diego de Alcalá".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 96.5 x 64.5 cm; 112 x 84 cm (frame).
Devotional scene in which San Diego de Alcalá is represented with a bouquet of roses raised in his tunic and a crucifix in his hand. The scene is represented in a majestic exterior where the classical architecture blends with nature and a large red curtain of baroque heritage. San Diego de Alcalá (1400-1463), Spanish Franciscan friar canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588, in the only canonization carried out by the Catholic Church during the 16th century. Born at the end of the 14th century into a modest family in the small village of San Nicolas del Puerto, north of Seville, from his earliest youth Diego consecrated himself to the Lord as a hermit. Already dressed in the Franciscan habit, as a lay brother in the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance, he made numerous trips, something rare in his time: he lived in the Canary Islands, Rome, Castile and Andalusia, and during his pilgrimage to Rome he visited various parts of Spain, France and Italy. Finally, he spent his last years in the convent of Santa María de Jesús de Alcalá de Henares, where he died in 1463. He was a very popular saint, patron saint of numerous localities, such as the city of California that bears his name. Hence, great artists treated his figure, as is the case of Lope de Vega, who dedicated a sonnet and a comedy to him. In the visual arts he is represented as a beardless young man, although he reached the age of sixty, with two iconographic attributes: some keys, for having been a porter and cook of the convent, and the most important, some flowers that he picks up in his habit, with both hands. This element alludes to one of the most popular episodes of his life, in which it is narrated that Diego was so generous with those who asked at the door of the convent, that his superiors found it annoying and excessive. On a certain occasion they saw how the saint was carrying something in his habit, and they were about to reprimand him when miraculously the bread rolls that Diego was taking to the poor turned into roses.