Saint Augustine before the Emperor Honorius
1676. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
This work is part of a set of 27 paintings on the ‘Life of Saint Augustine’, which decorated the lower main cloister of the Convent of San Felipe el Real (Madrid). It was commissioned to José García Hidalgo, who was to carry it out, apparently in an ill-defined partnership with Alonso del Arco, between 1663 and 1711. The works related to this cycle belonging to the Museo del Prado collection to date are as follows: P3268, P3770 (sketch), P4096, P4754, P4755, P5055, P5117, P5508, P5862 (and its sketch P3514), P6124, P6126, P6135, P6971, P7490. The main iconographic source for García Hidalgo´s work was the collection of prints by the Flemish engraver Schelte Adams Bolswert. The Bolswert prints have helped to correctly identify many of the scenes in the cycle, whose iconographic motifs had been confused or simply lost to time following the Spanish Ecclesiastical Confiscation.
Iturbe Sáiz, Antonio, Patrimonio artístico de tres conventos agustinos en Madrid antes y después de la desamortización de Mendizábal. Actas del Simposium La desamortización: el expolio del patrimonio artístico y cultural de la Iglesia en España, San Lorenzo del Escorial, Madrid, R.C.U. Escorial-Mª Cristina, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2007, p.335-368
