The BBVA Collection is contributing to this this exhibition, on show at the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia following its premiere at the Carmen Thyssen Museum of Malaga, with the loan of The Dream of St Ferdinand, an excellent painting by Matías de Arteaga, one of the leading artists from the Seville school of baroque.

The aim of the exhibition is to examine the popularity in Spanish art during the seventeenth century of depictions of key scenes from the lives of the saints, highlighting their propagandistic mission, responding to the reforms introduced by the Council of Trent. As a result, artists engaged with this iconography with a twofold intent: firstly, to underline their allegorical function, which, together with their heightened realism and dramatism, helped to convey the required moral values to the general population, and, secondly, to capture a sense of timelessness that would evince the fragility of universal and “fiercely human” beings.

In this context, the theme of The Dream of St Ferdinand is highly pertinent: it depicts one of the most important events in the life of King Ferdinand III of Castile, called the Saint—canonized by Pope Clement X in 1671—against the backdrop of the reconquest of Spain. According to tradition, while the king was in his camp during the siege of Seville, Our Lady of the Kings appeared to him in a vision to predict his victory. From a visual perspective, the painting is a magnificent example of the baroque aesthetic in which one can appreciate the decisive influence of Juan de Valdés Leal and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, the two great masters of the time, on Matías de Arteaga’s style.