Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

Description

Scholars have long debated exactly who stands before us in this Saint Elizabeth of Portugal reproduction, since the canvas carries no inscription and the same legend of roses turning from alms into flowers attaches itself to other holy women, among them Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Saint Casilda. The crown and the courtly bearing of the figure have settled most readings toward the Franciscan queen who died in 1336, and some historians read the picture as a retrato a lo divino, in which a noblewoman of the Seville of Zurbaran sat for her own portrait under the guise of the saint.

About Saint Elizabeth of Portugal Reproduction

Return to the canvas itself and the debate gives way to plain looking. The woman stands in three-quarter turn, dressed not in the armor of history painting but in the sumptuous court fashion of the lifetime of Zurbaran: a jeweled crown, an elaborate gown, and a fold of skirt gathered to hold a handful of roses, the flowers that stand in for the coins she once carried for the poor. Light falls warmly across her face, modeled with a sculptural weight that sets her apart from the dark ground behind her, while the brocade and silk of her dress catch and hold that light in passages of real density.

This handling of fabric is where the reputation of Zurbaran rests most securely, and it belongs to a moment when his religious portraits were moving away from austere penitence toward this kind of courtly splendor. Each fold of silk is laid down with a weight of paint that a print flattens and a hand-painted surface keeps.

Our painters build this oil on canvas reproduction stroke by stroke, matching the palette of Zurbaran and the sculptural fall of light across the face of the saint, rather than printing or mechanically reproducing the image. Particular attention goes to the lustrous brocade and silk, the passage collectors single out first, and to the dark ground that gives her figure its weight. The result is a genuine oil painting reproduction, an object built in layered paint rather than ink, carrying the ridges and depth of a worked surface.

The hand-painted reproduction

A portrait of this bearing holds a formal room, a library, or a study with dark paneling, and it sits just as naturally as a gift for anyone drawn to Spanish Baroque portraiture or to the quiet authority of a single standing figure. What you receive is:

• a hand-painted oil on canvas, not a printed copy
• a choice of sizes to suit your wall
• a gallery-ready canvas, stretched and ready to hang
• a certificate of authenticity
• painted to order in 2 to 3 weeks, then delivered in 5 to 7 days