Saint Dominic in Soriano
Ca. 1629.Not on display
While a large number of copies, variants and lost works by Maíno on the subject of the miracle of Saint Dominic in Soriano are known to exist or have existed, only three autograph works on this theme are now considered to have to survived, namely the two under discussion here (Museo del Prado, P5773 and State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Inv. GE32) and the one in the church of Santa Eulalia in Segovia. Most of the numerous paintings depicting the miracle of Soriano to be found in the Hispanic world derive from Maíno’s interpretation of this event. Various authors have suggested that there were earlier Andalusian paintings on this subject matter, but this hypothesis can neither be proved nor ruled out. Old documentary sources suggest that it was the Dominicans of the seminary of Santo Tomás in Madrid who were primarily responsible for promoting this cult in Spain, and that Maíno played a key role in the formulation of its visual expression.
The episode depicted is that of the miracle that took place in the relatively minor Dominican monastery in Soriano Calabro (Vibo Valentia, Calabria, Italy) on 15 September 1530. On that night, three women appeared to a lay brother and gave him a rolled up canvas of a portrait of Saint Dominic. The mysterious vision took place again over three consecutive nights during which various issues gradually became clear: the women were the Virgin, Saint Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalene, who had come to the monastery to bring the vera effigie of the founder of the Dominican order as that building lacked a worthy image of the saint. The likeness is described in detail in the Raccolta by Silvestro Frangipane, which is the first account on the monastery in Soriano.
The three versions that are now securely attributed to Maíno use the same composition: Saint Catherine of Siena holds up the canvas with the image of Saint Dominic while the Virgin points to it, looking at the Dominican monk kneeling on the left who is experiencing the vision. The Magdalen appears in three-quarter profile on the right, closing the composition on that side. Maíno places most emphasis on the Virgin, attaching less importance to the other two saints. The Virgin’s pointing gesture recalls the scene of the tapestry with the portrait of Philip IV in Maíno’s Recapture of Bahía, as Steven N. Orso observed.
With regard to detail, however, there are numerous variations between the three renditions. The portrait of Saint Dominic (young and bearded, rather than the older man in the original in Soriano) varies in all three cases, while the monk experiencing the vision is different in the Prado canvas. It is possible that the separate patrons of the three works wished to be depicted as protagonists of the miraculous event.
In the canvas in the Hermitage, the architectural background that represents the church in Soriano where the apparition took place is of a classical style with Ionic pilasters, while the works in the Prado and the church of Santa Eulalia include a depiction of an altarpiece in the background (whose style in the Prado rendition is notably close to Maíno’s altarpiece for the Franciscans in Pastrana), the subject of which is the Annunciation. The choice of this subject was not a random one, as according to printed sources on the history of the monastery in Soriano Calabro, its founder, Vincenzo Catanzaro, lived in a house next to a church dedicated to the Annunciation while the monastery was being built.
The version of this subject by which Maíno initially became known was a painting by his hand (now thought to be lost) that was in the chapel of the seminary of Santo Tomás in Madrid in May 1629. The Dominicans disseminated the legend of Soriano by presenting not just the original image as miraculous but also its copies, and Maíno’s painting is said to have demonstrated its thaumaturgic nature on the very day of its installation in the Madrid seminary, when every member of the family of the hosier Jusepe del Castillo was cured through its power of intercession.
These miraculous powers associated with the cult of Saint Dominic in Soriano explain the immediate dissemination of Maíno’s composition through copies and variants. They also explain some of its characteristics, such as the differences between the face of the saint in the various versions: given that the original in Soriano was considered a sacred rather than a man-made image, his apparently glowing and constantly changing face was thought to make it impossible to obtain faithful copies. Maíno always used the same presentation, which made it possible to identify the legend associated with the image and thus make it recognisable, but the saint’s face, in keeping with its sacred image character, changes from one rendition to another.
The painting in the Museo del Prado has been on deposit with the Museo de San Telmo in San Sebastian since 1884 (Carlos Varona, M. C. de,: Juan Bautista Maíno: 1581-1649, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2009, p. 304).
