Santo Tomás de Aquino

What it is

This is a painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, dated 1650. It shows a bearded man in a black cloak over a white habit, gazing upward with a glowing, halo-like light behind his head. He holds a quill pen in one hand and rests the other on an open book with red edges, set on a stone pedestal. A golden star is on his chest.

Why it matters

Murillo was a major Spanish painter of the seventeenth century. His portrait presents Aquinas through the symbols of a writer and teacher: the pen, the book, and the light of inspiration. The star on the chest is a traditional sign associated with Aquinas in religious art. The painting reveals how Spanish artists of the Baroque period wanted viewers to see the great theologian.

Look closer

• Which objects in the painting show that this man is a writer or teacher, and which show that he is holy?
• Why might the painter show the figure looking upward rather than at the viewer?
• This portrait was painted more than three centuries after Aquinas died. What might a later artist add or change in order to make him look a certain way?