Collection: Miracles of St. Salvador de Horta

ARTIST: Museum Religious Art Classics

ARTWORK NARRATIVE:

Artist: Juan Rodríguez Juárez – c. 1720

This painting depicts Saint Salvador de Horta healing the sick. Saint Salvador de Horta was a Franciscan friar born in 1520 in Santa Colona de Farnés, Gerona, Spain. He was renowned for his many miracles (especially healing the sick) and for taking vows of poverty; he was eventually canonized in 1717 by Pope Clement XI.

In this painting the saint is depicted at the footsteps of a church, offering his blessing to a wounded man at the bottom right. The composition (taken from a print by Peter Paul Rubens) must have enjoyed some popularity among the Franciscans. An earlier canvas of the same subject was commissioned from the artist José Juárez—Rodríguez Juárez's grandfather—for the Convento Grande de San Francisco, Mexico City.