Description

This bust represents Saint Anthony of Padua, using his traditional iconography, as a young monk dressed in the brown habit of the Franciscan order. The habit is decorated in the estofada style and is tied at the waist with a rope belt. The lower half of his right arm is missing. At the centre of his chest is a round-shaped reliquary, framed in gold and decorated with a row of simple “C”s. This would have originally contained a relic of this saint. Judging by its stylistic features and the design of the reliquary frame, this image can be located within early-17th C. Sevillian baroque sculpture. The overpainting to which the piece has been subjected impedes close study. 

The bust – like the other nine such pieces kept at the Iglesia de la Anunciación – originally formed part of the church’s old chapel of relics, which nowadays is used as the sacristy. It bears witness to the profound devotion practiced by the Jesuits in relation to the relics of saints, a form of worship that was promoted by the founder of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola.