Nun with Saint Augustine, Saint Agnes and other saints

This complex group portrait-cum-religious composition depicts a nun with Saints Augustine and Agnes and other saints, a type of votive image that placed the living religious in the company of their patron saints and founders. The presence of Augustine identifies the sitter as a member of an Augustinian community — likely a convent — while Agnes, as a martyr and model of chastity, reinforces the community's values. Such images served multiple functions: they honoured the specific nun (or the community that commissioned the portrait), they invoked saintly intercession, and they demonstrated the community's spiritual lineage through the founder-saint. Van Thulden's 1650 canvas, held by the Goya Museum, may have been produced for a Spanish Augustinian convent, connecting to the Spanish imperial network that supported Flemish art throughout the period.

The composition must manage the spatial relationship between the living nun — rendered with portrait specificity — and the canonically represented saints beside her, who are both larger in theological importance and more conventionally idealised. Van Thulden uses light to distinguish the two registers: warm natural light on the nun's face, a more golden, iconic light on the saints. The group achieves coherence through the unified spatial setting.