Circle of Juan de Ruelas

Art market, Madrid, 1997 (as Francisco Pacheco);

Where acquired by the Apelles Collection;

From whom acquired by the present owner in May 2018.

E. Valdivieso in En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, H. Brigstocke and Z. Véliz (eds), exh. cat., Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo, 2000, pp. 70–77, no. 5, reproduced in colour (as circle of Juan de Roelas).

Oviedo, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, 20 May 1999 – 30 January 2000, no. 5, reproduced in colour (as circle of Juan de Roelas).

This large canvas was almost certainly designed as the central section of an important altarpiece for a Dominican convent and was painted in Seville in around 1620, by an as yet unidentified but talented master working in the circle of the Sevillian painter and priest Juan de Roelas (1560–1624). The painting depicts the Virgin appearing to Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order, as she presents him with a crown of roses and a rosary. Beyond is a view of the French city of Albi, with its distinctive Cathedral of Saint Cecilia, the place where the saint's vision is said to have taken place. The saint is dressed in his Dominican robes, holding his attributes of the lily and the book of his Order, accompanied by a dog with a torch in its mouth, supporting a globe surmounted by a cross, in reference to him as defender of the Faith.

The figures of the Virgin and St Dominic are loosely based on an engraving of 1516 by Albrecht Dürer and another by Bernardino Passeri of The Virgin of the Rosary with St Dominic, dated 1581.