Antique Portrait Oil on Copper of Saint Teresa of Ávila, 17th/18th Century, Antique Giltwood Frame — Sourced in France

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Description

A rare and moving small devotional painting in oil on copper depicting Saint Teresa of Jesus (Teresa of Ávila) in … Read more A rare and moving small devotional painting in oil on copper depicting Saint Teresa of Jesus (Teresa of Ávila) in spiritual rapture — arms opened, face lifted toward a burst of heavenly light, wearing the brown habit and white mantle of the Carmelite order she reformed, her books just visible on the shelf behind her: a quiet reference to the writings that made her the first woman named a Doctor of the Church.
Copper was the most deliberate of supports. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was chosen for small sacred pictures precisely because its non-absorbent surface holds oil pigment with jewel-like luminosity — and because works like this were made not for churches but for private devotion: the chapel, the oratory, the bedchamber. To own one was a statement of both faith and standing.
Teresa was canonized in 1622 — the same ceremony as Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier — and her image swept through European and Spanish colonial art in the decades that followed. This painting follows that iconographic tradition, in a manner consistent with the Spanish or Hispano-Flemish school of the 17th/18th century.
Offered as found, in untouched antique condition: scattered paint losses are present and visible in the photographs, honest evidence of a devotional object that has survived for centuries without intervention — a state many collectors of early religious art specifically seek out. Presented in an antique giltwood frame with bold egg-and-dart molding. Sourced in France on one of our own buying trips.
Item details:

Period: 17th/18th century, antique
Style: Spanish School / Hispano-Flemish / Baroque devotional
Medium: Oil on copper panel
Place of Origin: Sourced in France
Condition: As found, untouched; scattered paint losses consistent with age, see photos; structurally sound
Dimensions: 12 by 9 by 1.5 See less