Spanish school of the 17th century. Attributable to JOSÉ DE CIEZA (Granada, 1656 - Madrid, 1692).
"The Sleeping Infant Jesus
Oil on panel.
With period frame.
Size: 36 x 34 cm; 60 x 60 cm (frame).
Devotional image framed within the Spanish Baroque, a scene of great tenderness that seeks to move the spirit of the faithful and exalt their religious feeling. To this end, the painter shows Jesus as an innocent child, sleeping carefree beside a river fed by two fountains, a symbolic element that alludes to Jesus as a source of living waters that quenches spiritual thirst. Jesus appears on a bed of white cloths, a colour representative of purity, and protected by a red cloak that falls over his head, alluding to the Passion, a veiled symbol of his dramatic destiny. It is therefore a fully symbolic image, very typical of Spanish Baroque religiosity.
Throughout its history, and especially in the Modern Age, Christian art delighted in casting the shadow of the cross over the innocent infancy of Jesus. The contrast between the happy unconcern of a child and the horror of the sacrifice to which he was predestined was designed to stir hearts. This idea was already familiar to the theologians of the Middle Ages, but the artists of the time expressed it discreetly, either through the Virgin's preoccupied expression or through the bunch of grapes which the Child is clutching in his hands. It was above all in the art of the Counter-Reformation that this funeral presentiment of the Passion was expressed by means of transparent allusions. Zurbarán shows the Infant Jesus pricking himself with his finger as he plaits a crown of thorns. Murillo, the little Saint John the Baptist showing him his cross of reeds. Finally, the theme finds its most moving expression in the subject of the Infant Jesus Sleeping on a Cross.
From its formal characteristics we can relate this work to the hand of José de Cieza, a Baroque painter active in Granada and Madrid in the second half of the 17th century. Trained in the workshop of his father, the painter Miguel Jerónimo de Cieza, the young artist learned in his early years the Flemish formulas of his father's language, which would be visible in his first works. His art evolved through his knowledge of the painting of Alonso Cano, and he finally achieved a mature language characterised by complex architectural perspectives with small figures. Works by Cieza are currently held in the Prado Museum, the Diocesan Museum of Huesca, the Royal Chapel of Granada, the Monastery of San Jerónimo, the Museum of Fine Arts of Granada and other public and private collections.