Saint Apollonia

Description

A pair of small metal pincers grips a single tooth, held almost casually in the hand of a young woman dressed for the Seville of her own century rather than for antiquity. That one detail, cool steel against warm fingers, is the key to the whole picture: this Saint Apollonia reproduction brings a brutal piece of hagiography into a room furnished like a portrait sitting. It is a painting people choose when they want something grave and well made rather than decorative.

About Saint Apollonia Reproduction

Zurbarán sets his saint in profile, mid-stride, as though she has just crossed into the frame, then turns her face back toward the viewer with an expression that gives little away. In her other hand she carries the palm of martyrdom, the standard sign of her story, which tradition holds ended with her jaw broken and her teeth pulled out for refusing to renounce her faith. An inscription at the lower left names her so there is no doubt who she is. The background is left dark and unplaced, so nothing competes with her for attention.

What makes the picture unusual is the clothing. Rather than the loose drapery of classical martyrs, Zurbarán dresses Apollonia in the fashionable, richly worked fabric of seventeenth century Seville, a choice he shares with contemporaries such as Caravaggio and Georges de La Tour, who also put sacred figures into the clothes of their own day. The sheen on her gown, the restrained modelling of her face, and the tenebrist shadow around her belong to one of the strongest stretches of work by Francisco de Zurbaran, likely painted for an altar devoted to female martyr saints in a Sevillian convent before the picture left Spain and eventually reached the Louvre.

The hand-painted reproduction

Our version of this Saint Apollonia reproduction is painted entirely by hand in oil on canvas, not printed at any stage. A trained painter builds up the fabric, the shadow, and the steady gaze stroke by stroke, matching the palette and the surface texture of the original so the raised brushwork and the weight of the oil remain visible on the finished canvas. Collectors who want a hand-painted replica rather than a flat image, and anyone furnishing a room that calls for something serious and still, tend to respond to this particular picture.

• Hand-painted oil on canvas, brushed by a trained artist, not printed
• Available in multiple sizes to suit the wall it will hang on
• Finished and stretched for gallery-ready, ready-to-hang display
• Certificate of authenticity included with every order
• Free worldwide shipping, with no shipping charge to any country