Juan de Parla

Juan de Parla’s brush could turn a saint’s halo into a second sun. In 1691 he painted Saint Francis of Paola in Seville’s Hospital de los Venerables, the friar’s face lit so fiercely it looks like he’s borrowed light from tomorrow. Watch the way the cord around his waist is knotted once, twice, three times, every loop painted so you feel the wool in your fingers.

He never signed the canvas, but the hospital’s archive still has his invoice: twelve reales for pigments, plus a barrel of wine the friars traded for the job.