Saint Teresa of Jesus

This piece from 1665 comes from a convent in Huesca that disappeared following the Spanish government's seizure of church property in the desamortización, or Spanish confiscation, in the late 19th century. It came to the Huesca Museum via the Provincial Monuments Commission (Comisión Provincial de Monumentos), which is responsible for these confiscated collections. It was traditionally thought to be the work of the Baroque painter Vicente Berdusán, but art critics no longer believe this to be true. Religious ecstasy was very important in Baroque religious painting in Spain. It was always treated with the propriety the Counter-Reformation demanded of devotional images. Saint Teresa of Jesus (Santa Teresa de Jesús) is an example of this. Also known as Teresa of Ávila, she was a 16th-century Spanish mystic who founded the reformed Order of the Discalced Carmelites and was canonized in 1622.