A precociously talented artist, scarcely out of his teens, was in 1620 commissioned to paint the portrait of an intrepid nun passing through his home city of Seville on her way to one of the farthest outposts of Spain’s vast empire.
His painting reveals a shrewd, formidable woman in late middle age, who clasps a book in her left hand while wielding a crucifix, almost as if it were a weapon, in her right.
