The Bowes Museum also houses 'The Last Communion of Peter Nolasco' (1611), part of a series of six paintings executed by Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654) for the Mercedarian convent of Seville. Although this painting has strayed far from its original home, the curator Jon Old shows how its material fabric, currently under conservation, retains physical traces of Seville.

The Bowes Museum collection of Spanish art is second in the UK only to that of the National Gallery and was acquired along with other works by the Bowes' agent, at a sale in Paris in 1862. Among its treasures are key works by El Greco (1541-1614) and Goya (1746-1828). The museum's 2010 exhibition on Goya highlights his key work 'Interior of a Prison' (1793-4). This work offers a very different kind of subject from El Greco's eloquently Catholic 'The Tears of Saint Peter' (c.1580), while generating an equally intense expressivity.