Mary and child, Saint Julita and Saint Guerito.

Francisco Henriques's Mary and Child, Saint Julita and Saint Guerito, dated 1505 and now in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, depicts an unusual pair of martyred saints — Julita (or Julitta) and her young son Quiricus (Guerito or Quirico), third-century martyrs whose cult was widespread in the medieval church. Mother and child martyred together for their Christian faith, their story resonated with Marian devotion — the parallel between Julita's maternal suffering and Mary's grief at the Crucifixion gave the pairing deep theological resonance. Henriques's commission for a panel including these relatively obscure saints likely reflects a specific institutional or personal devotion on the part of the patron — a church dedicated to these saints, or a patron bearing their names. The painting demonstrates Henriques's versatility in serving the varied devotional needs of Portuguese ecclesiastical patronage in the early sixteenth century.

Henriques employs his Flemish-influenced oil technique in rendering the unusual grouping of Mary with Child alongside Julita and Guerito — the two pairs of mother and child creating a compositional and theological rhyme. The saints' martyrdom attributes and the Virgin's devotional prominence are balanced in the composition, and Henriques's characteristic precision in rendering faces and textiles gives each figure clear individual identity within the devotional program.