We owe the correct identification of the subject of the painting, of rare iconography, and of its author, to Enrique Valdivieso, who estimates that the piece dates from around 1740 based on the similarities between the features of the face of Elijah’s mother and the Immaculate Conception at San Lesmes, which was signed in 1733. The mature and loose composition lead him to believe that it was done following a stay in the court of Philip V in the city of Seville (1729-1733), when the artist came in contact with French painting.

The scene represents the birth of Elijah narrated by St Epiphanius in his book Lives of the Prophets. Several men dressed in white habits (as Enrique Valdivieso points out, they must be the eremites of the future Carmelite order, given the ties between the order and the prophet) greet a half-nude child seated on his mother’s lap, and offer him the gift of flames. One of them holds in his left hand a cup with flames, and in his left a burning spoon that he is offering to feed the child. Flames also sprout from the belt fastened around the child’s waist, which two angels hold by its ends. At the feet of the mother, represented as a Virgin, there is a heap of burning wood. The prominent role of fire in the painting is a foretelling of the climax of the life of Elijah, when he was transported to the Heavens in a fiery chariot.

In the background, his father Sobach is asleep on an armchair, and a ray of light from the heavens reveals to him in his dreams the meaning of what is taking place. The iconography derives from one of the forty prints by Abraham van Diepenbeek (1599-1675) included in the book Speculum carmelitanum, written by Friar Daniel de la Virgen María and published in Antwerp in 1680, which describes the life of Elijah. One of the prints has a caption in Latin at the bottom that explains the contents of the scene: “Elijah is greeted at birth by men wearing a habit white as snow, and they feed him the fire of his mother’s breasts, and even serve him flames instead of food, as is revealed in the dreams of Sobach. St. Epiphanius, Lives of the Prophets”.

The subject of the painting, with its strong ties to the Carmelite order, suggests that it may have been commissioned for one of the order’s convents in Seville or the rest of Andalusia, taking into account the affiliation of the artist.