Juan de Valdes Leal
Seville 1622 - 1690 Seville
Circle of
"Cras Tibi"
Spain
End of 16./beginning of 17. century
Oil on wood panel
43 x 65,5 cm

The Spanish Baroque painter Juan de Valdes Leal studied with Francisco de Herrera the Elder (1576-1656), among others, and was regarded as a technically extremely gifted artist. He also interacted with Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) and produced his first works in Cordoba in 1652, but soon returned to Seville. Valdes Leal was very productive, and his works are characterised by great inventiveness. He liked to paint the Baroque theme of vanitas or memento mori, which was widespread throughout Europe. This gloomy and macabre theme also earned him the name "painter of the dead", as is also clearly expressed in this painting.

From the right side, a middle-aged man approaches an emaciated body lying on the dry earth. He is wearing a liturgical vestment, the violet colour of the dalmatic being associated with penitence, repentance, and mourning, and is also worn at funerals instead of the traditional black dress. He looks down at the corpse with a furrowed forehead and points to it with an almost imploring gesture, as if he wants to address it. The man's body, already desiccated in rigor mortis, lies on the earthy ground, surrounded by skeletal parts and skulls. His head, with its frizzy patch of hair and sunken cheeks, is also propped up on a skull. The sunken abdomen further emphasises the ribcage emerging from underneath the paper-thin skin. His scrawny arms are resting on the thighs, as if in a pose of sleep. The sinewy legs hang limply to the side and only a torn cloth covers his loins. It appears to be a chance encounter, with the sight of the dead man intended to evoke terror in the viewer.

Interestingly, the dead man's blank stare is directed at the approaching man, with dark eye sockets and a wide-open mouth. Although he is no longer capable of speech, the communication to the living is revealed by the writing on the scroll above the corpse: it reads "cras tibi", referring to an inscription often found on medieval tombstones: "hodie mihi, cras tibi" - "today it is me, tomorrow it will be you". This expresses the transience of human life and the victory of death, typical of Valdes Leal's pestilential paintings. The background offers a scene of the end times with the juxtaposition of a blue-grey sky from which an angel flies down carrying a person - perhaps the soul a man? - while on the left another figure seems to fall into the blazing fire of hell. This contrast also reflects the moral of the painting, namely, to be penitent in order to be redeemed after death. Particularly important here is one's position in this world and the high importance of charity, this being understood as one of the tasks of the commissioning church.

Thematically similar paintings by the so-called painter of the dead are "Finis gloriae mundi" ("The End of the Glory of the World") and "In ictu oculi" ("In the Blink of an Eye") from 1670-72, which show human remains or even a grim reaper triumphing over the deceased. The works on the allegory of death and its universality, which Valdes Leal called "hieroglyphics of our life after death", are the culmination of his artistic work.