School of LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, ca. 1510-1586), second half of the 16th century.
"Virgin and Child with Saint John.
Oil on panel.
With restorations.
Measurements: 72 x 53 cm; 89 x 70 cm (frame).
The work in question is influenced by the school of Luis de Morales, known as "The divine Morales" for his religious themes, as well as for the refinement and subtlety of his style. It depicts the figures of the Virgin, Saint John the Baptist and the Child, captured with great mastery and special attention to chromaticism. The lighting is a tenebrist, artificial and directed light that falls directly on the figures, leaving the rest in semi-darkness and creating expressive chiaroscuro effects that give the volumes a naturalistic quality. It should also be noted that the sober, clear composition lends great expressiveness to the image, which is intended to move the viewer's mood. This painting was probably intended for private devotion. Thus, painting was forced to reflect the ideals prevailing in these circles, and religious themes were therefore the main subject matter of Spanish painting during this period.
Luis de Morales, a painter of great quality and marked personality, was perhaps the best of the Spanish painters of the second half of the 16th century, with the exception of El Greco. His training poses serious problems, although Palomino describes him as a disciple of the Flemish painter Pedro de Campaña, who lived in Seville between 1537 and 1563. Certainly the meticulousness and detail of his brushstrokes and the conception of the landscape are Flemish in origin, and most of his iconic themes are of late medieval tradition. But he painted human types and used a colouring and sfumato related to the Lombard tradition of a Bernardino Luini and a Cristoforo Solario, whom he probably met not on a trip to Italy but possibly to Valencia, in order to catch up with the novelties brought by the Leonardesque Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos and the Raphaelesque Vicente and Juan Masip. However, the most personal aspect of his painting lies in the tormented, almost hysterical atmosphere in which his figures breathe, more focused on an intense inner life than on action, full of melancholy and ascetic renunciation and characteristic of the climate of tense religiosity imposed in 16th-century Spain by the reform movements, from the less orthodox Erasmianism and Alumbradism to the more genuine mysticism and Trentism. Morales, called the Divine by his first biographer, Antonio Palomino, because he painted only religious subjects with great delicacy and subtlety, reached his peak from 1550 to 1570, when he painted numerous altarpieces, He painted numerous altarpieces, triptychs and isolated canvases that were widely distributed because they satisfied the popular religiosity of the time, although some of his canvases contain quotations and information of literary erudition, the result of his contact with enlightened clients, primarily the bishops of the diocese of Badajoz, in whose service he worked. On the other hand, his presence in the monastery of El Escorial, called by Philip II, is not documented, although it seems that the latter acquired some of his works to give them as gifts. The enormous production and the continuous demand for his most frequent and popular iconographic themes obliged him to maintain a large workshop in which his two sons, Cristóbal and Jerónimo, collaborated; a workshop responsible for many copies that circulate and are still considered to be Morales's autograph works.