August is synonymous with one of the most eagerly awaited astronomical phenomena of the summer: the Perseids or Tears of Saint Lawrence, which these days reach their climax –here here are some of the best locations to see them in the Community of Madrid-.
The reason this shooting star shower is so named is because of its proximity in the calendar to the feast of St. Lawrence, which takes place on August 10 – and which gives way to one of the most important verbenas summer’s most traditional. This saint is also a martyr: he was persecuted and burned alive on a grill.
As a result, and according to tradition, the tears she shed then are the shooting stars that we can see these days crossing the sky. But the tears of St. Lawrence have also remained for posterity in another way: the Italian painter Tiziano Vecellio captured this episode in a painting that can be visited in the Community of Madrid.
Saint Lawrence in Titian’s painting
The painting, which is considered a masterpiece of the painter’s last years, is entitled Martirio de San Lorenzo (Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence) and according to Patrimonio Nacional’s explanation at its website “is a commission that Philip II entrusted to Titian in 1564 for the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial“, where the painting is currently exhibited.
Specifically, it is located in the Altar of the Old or Borrowed Church, a chapel where it has been for 450 years, since its arrival at the Escorial in 1574. And it is not the only version that Titian painted of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence: the original was painted between 1556 and 1559 for the tomb of Lorenzo Massolo, in the ancient Church of the Crociferi in Venice.
Today, another church, the Jesuit church, is built on top of this church, and it is also the site of the exposed at the present time.