Description

This bust represents Anthony the Great, using his traditional iconography, as an elderly man with a long, flowing beard. He wears a white tunic and a hooded brown habit that is richly decorated in the estofada style with gilded floral motifs. His left hand rests on the reliquary that opens in the middle of his chest, framed with gilded carved mouldings. This would have originally contained a relic of this saint.

Judging by the predominant features of its style (frontality, lack of expression, the drape of the clothing, the treatment of the beard, with its tiny curls hanging symmetrically) and the type of moulding used, the reliquary can be considered representative of Sevillian mannerism, from the late 16th C.–early 17th C.

The bust – like the other nine such pieces kept at the Iglesia de la Anunciación – originally formed part of the church’s old chapel of relics, which nowadays is used as the sacristy. It bears witness to the profound devotion practiced by the Jesuits in relation to the relics of saints – a form of worship that was promoted by the founder of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola.