The Miracle at the Well

The Miracle at the Well, painted by Alonso Cano in 1638 and in the Prado, depicts a miracle associated with the life of Saint Isidore the Farmer — the twelfth-century Madrid peasant who was canonized in 1622 and became the city's patron saint. According to tradition, Isidore's young son fell into a well and was miraculously raised by the saint's prayers, the water rising to carry the child to safety. The subject was ideal for Madrid painters in the period after Isidore's canonization, and Cano's 1638 version — painted in his first year in the capital after leaving Seville — represents both a homage to his new city's patron and a display of his naturalistic figure painting to a new audience. The landscape setting, which the well-and-water miracle demanded, was an unusual challenge for Cano, who typically worked in interior or neutral settings, and the work shows him rising to that challenge with considerable success.

The landscape background is handled with greater atmospheric sophistication than in most of Cano's religious paintings, reflecting his rapid assimilation of landscape conventions he encountered in the Madrid collections. The figure of the saint is given sculptural weight that prevents the landscape from overwhelming the devotional focus.