Saint Onofre

The canvas belonged to the king of Naples (Ferdinand IV?). Cardinal Fech, who had gone to Rome to buy paintings for Napoleon, received it from the king and kept it until his death in 1839. When the cardinal's collection was sold in 1842, acquired by Don Jorge Spiridón. In 1855 it was exhibited in Rome, at the Baths of Caracalla, on the occasion of an exhibition of old masters. Pope Pius IX then admired the painting and, wishing to purchase it for the Vatican Museum, offered 12,000 Roman escudos for it. Spiridon told the Pope that he did not want to separate himself from the canvas, but at his death his children could sell it to him. Pius IX died before the collector. The painting was later inherited by Don José Spiridón who sold it to the 17th Duke of Alba in 1924 with the intervention of the painter Ignacio Zuloaga.

It is mentioned in the artists' dictionary “Thieme Becker”. Professor Sánchez Cantón proposes the identification of the character with Saint Adalbert, evangelizer of the Slavs. From an iconographic point of view, it could be compared to Saint Onofre in the Leningrad Museum, who, in addition to the attributes that appear on this canvas, has the skull. But the compositional differences are notable. The saint's attitude is the same (although inverted) as that of Magdalena del Prado. Mr. Milicua believes that the canvas could be an imitation of Ribera by Lucas Jordán.