Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your gallerySaint Romanus of Antioch and Saint Barulas
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Read the Latin letters in the open book, then compare the small saints painted on his robe’s embroidered bands with the praying boy.
Zurbarán painted this altarpiece in 1638 for the high altar of San Román in Seville, a church dedicated to Saint Romanus of Antioch. The saint lifts the tongue his torturers tore out and grips a huge book with a Latin prayer for his help, while the seven-year-old Barulas, moved by his words to become a martyr, prays beside him. Church reformers wanted saints that anyone could recognize at once.
Oil on canvas · 246.5 × 185.4 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Saint Romanus of Antioch and Saint Barulas
- Artist
- Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)
- Date
- 1638
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 246.5 × 185.4 cm (97 1/16 × 73 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Chauncey McCormick and Mrs. Richard E. Danielson
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.