Anonymous author

c.1721

Oil painting

This painting is a posthumous portrait of Sister Maria Luisa del Niño Jesús y Borja, a Poor Clare nun and member of the illustrious Borgia family, one of the most influential noble houses in Spanish and papal history. The inscription painted on the canvas indicates that she died on 24 May 1721 at the age of 82, and stresses that it is her ‘vera effigies’, i.e. a faithful representation of her person.

The nun is depicted recumbent, dressed in the austere habit of the Poor Clares, with a crucifix in her hands and a serene face, lying on a white cushion. The sober, recollected composition is in keeping with the type of post-mortem devotional portrait typical of the Baroque period, in which the commemoration of the deceased was combined with the exaltation of Christian virtue and the hope of eternal life.

Sister María Luisa’s membership of the Borgia family, linked to saints, popes and dukes, gives the portrait an additional value, not only devotional but also genealogical and symbolic, reinforcing the link between nobility and spirituality in the conventual context of the 18th century.