The Miracle of Saint Fruncís of Assisi

The theme of this work is taken from the work by Fray Iván de Soria y Buitrón entitled An Epilogue of the Life, Death and Miracles of the Seraphic Stigmatic and Patriareh, Saint Fruncís, published in Cuenca in 1649. « Works on similar themes have been found in Perú and Chile and the similarities among them suggest that they all derive from the same engraving. The episode shown pertains to a miraculous Resurrection which took place through the intercession of Saint Francis while he was preaching in a small village. The family of a devout man decided to go and hear him and a maid, charged with looking after the said gentleman’s son, was left to take care of the house. She was careless and the child fell into a cauldron of boiling water. Fearful of the consequences, the woman decided to hide the pieces of the child that she retrieved in a trunk. When the owners of the house returned home, they took Saint Francis with them in order to j honor him with a banquet, during which the saint had a revelation about the unhappy event and asked for some apples. Everybody answered that apples were not in season just then, but the saint insisted that the apples were in the same trunk that held the remains of the dead child. When this trunk was opened, the child emerged alive from it holding two apples and said "the tree of divine virtue bears this fruit”. One notable aspect of this work is the abundance of features alluding to everyday life: lemons, landscape paintings in the upper part, the dresser on which silverware is ranged and clothing pertaining to the late XVIth and early XVllth centuries. This piece at one time hung in the Franciscan Convent in México City. It passed to the MUNAL from the San Diego Viceregal Painting Gallery in the year 2000.