Anonymous Flemish Artist, The Baptism of the Eunuch of the Candace

18th century
Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotehs, Seville, Spain

The painting follows the 18th-century practice of placing the narrative scene of the title within a larger landscape. The baptism is recounted in Acts 8:26-39, where it is clear that the eunuch is an important officer of the Ethiopian court. Here he is represented as a half-naked savage, perhaps representative of the non-whites that Europeans were preaching to, and enslaving, at the time of the painting.

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Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.