The Face of a Mystic

St. Teresa of Avila,* the 16th century mystic, never liked the picture that was painted of her at 60 by the pious but uninspired Fray Juan de la Miserias. "God forgive you, Fray Juan," she told him, "for having painted me so very ugly and stiff." But for more than three centuries Fray Juan's painting was the only likeness of St. Teresa the world had ever seen.

In Madrid last week, another one turned up that must have pleased St. Teresa more. A 14-by-10-in. oil painting, it shows her as a handsome, sensitive-featured woman in her early forties.

For 309 years, the painting has been the prized possession of the Ahumada family of Malaga, to which St. Teresa's mother belonged. Only a few friends of the family ever saw it. No one but the head of the house was allowed even to touch it. But now, short of funds, the family has put it on the market. Madrid experts have pronounced it a genuine 16th century painting by an anonymous artist of the Toledo school, and historians have vouched for the authenticity of an inscription on the reverse of the painting which traces its history back as far as 1643. Spain's board of fine arts is trying to raise money to buy it for the state. Asking price: 1,000,000 pesetas ($26,500).

*Or, as a recent scholarly biography suggests she might better be called, St. Teresa of Gottarendura (TIME, Oct. 29).

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