Apparition of Saint Isidore to Saint Ferdinand, king, before the walls of Seville

The Apparition of Saint Isidore to Saint Ferdinand from 1799, in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, depicts a legendary miracle from the reconquest of Seville in which the patron saint of Madrid appeared to the future king Ferdinand III. The religious-historical subject combines devotion to Spain's national saints with the celebration of the reconquista — the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula — that remained a central narrative of Spanish Catholic identity in the late eighteenth century. The year 1799 was one of the most significant of Goya's career: he published the Caprichos prints, was appointed First Court Painter, and produced the Ferdinand Guillemardet portrait; this religious-historical work demonstrates the simultaneous demands of different patronage contexts. The Buenos Aires holding of this and several other Goya works reflects the particular cultural connection between Spain and South America that brought Spanish Old Masters into Latin American collections across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Goya renders the visionary scene with atmospheric drama and warm color, combining religious devotion with patriotic historical narrative in a characteristically dynamic composition.