Andalusian school of the second half of the seventeenth... Lot n° 46

Andalusian school of the second half of the seventeenth century. "Martyrdom of St. Stephen". Oil on canvas. Relined. Presents jumps and losses in the painting. With restorations. Measurements: 95 x 117 cm. We are in front of a completely narrative work, with the Saint in the center of the composition commending himself to God, surrounded by the executioners who execute his martyrdom. The scene is contextualized in an exterior landscape, with a castle in the last instance, and a broad landscape dominated by a dim light. The deacon Stephen was the first martyr of the Christian faith. He was stoned by the Jews, who accused him of blaspheming Moses. According to a 10th century manuscript dedicated to his biography, on the day he was born he was snatched away by Satan, who replaced him in his cradle with a small demon. He then left the child girdled at the door of a bishop named Julion, who discovered the child being suckled by a white doe and adopted him. Some time later Stephen returned to his father's house, and with the sign of the cross expelled the demon that occupied his place. Ordained deacon by the apostles, he argued with the Jewish rhetoricians, who had him arrested and condemned for blasphemy and stoned to death. As we see here, St. Stephen is represented as a young man wearing a deacon's dalmatic and stole. From the 15th century onwards he also had as attributes a book or a sheet in his dalmatic, and the stones of his stoning may be red and gold. The most represented scenes of his life are his substitution by an imp as a child, his ordination as a deacon, the dispute with the rabbis, his arrest and interrogation and his stoning, as well as the cycle of the invention and transfer of his relics.