Ecce Homo, or Christ, the Man of Sorrows, was one of Luis de Morales' most popular subjects, which he treated in a variety of designs and sizes, from life-size full-lengths to head-and-shoulder compositions, produced for both secular and religious clientele. One of the most important artists of 16-century Spain, Morales received numerous commissions in his native Badajoz, from members of the nobility in Castile and Andalucia, as well as the Spanish court and no less than the King of Portugal. Establishing a chronology of Morales' output is made difficult by a lack of dated works, though the recent cleaning of a larger, half-length Ecce Homo (private collection, Madrid), has revealed a rare partial signature and date of 1556.1 The present panel, probably executed towards the end of the following decade, ranks among Morales' most intimate renditions of this iconography. The type is known in several iterations, including the painting sold in these Rooms, 4 December 2013, lot 5 (£170,500), in which Christ is additionally draped in a blue cloak;2 another version or copy is recorded in the collection of the Conde de Adanero, Madrid.3
Intended for private devotion, the small format lends intense focus to the figure of Christ who, having been scourged, has been crowned with thorns and presented with a mock sceptre, provoking Pontius Pilate's words ‘Ecce Homo’ or ‘Behold the man’. His down-turned eyes and the tears running down His cheek refer less to the narrative details as related in the Gospels, however, as to the typological verses in the Old Testament, describing the Messiah's psychology: ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53:3), inviting the viewer to enter into an empathetic state of spiritual meditation, in accordance with the sentiments of contemporary Spanish mystics and the ideals of the Counter Reformation.
‘He was nicknamed El Divino because everything he painted had a sacred subject but also because he painted some heads of Christ in which the hair was executed so finely and so delicately that it made even those who are most versed in art want to blow on it to see it move, for each strand of hair seems to be as fine as a real one.’4
Morales' recurrent interest in such sacred images, and his facility for representing the amalgamation of physical mortification and psychological anguish to achieve an acute sense of pathos, earned him the sobriquet ‘El Divino’ in the 1560s, at the height of his career, as later described by the seventeenth-century Spanish biographer Antonio Palomino. ‘El Divino’ referred not only to the subject matter in which Morales specialised, but also to his meticulous technique. This painting is characteristic of the artist's later devotional works in the use of the black background, typically built up using two layers of black pigment (vegetable carbon black for the first layer, and bone black for the second) – presumably intended to achieve a rich depth to further offset the luminosity of the subject, and to prevent the white ground from showing through. Most exquisite is Morales' treatment of Christ's hair, beard and the coarse rope around his neck and wrist, the fibres of which are described in variegated shades. This veracity of detail is one of the hallmarks of Morales' finest works, in which hairs are executed with delicate, individual brushstrokes of darker, then brighter pigments, varying in breadth to create the illusion of volume and movement. These textures, along with the surface of the broken cane, consequently heighten the contrast of the sfumato technique Morales employs in Christ's flesh tones, particularly in His face and neck.
The result is an image at once shocking and beautiful, characterised by a highly distinctive style that reflects both the influence of Leonardo and his followers (it is not thought that Morales went to Italy, though he may have encountered the work of the Valencian Leonardesque artists Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos), and the precision of Flemish painters, such as his master in Seville, Pieter de Kempeneer.
The use of a softwood panel (probably pine) is unusual within Morales' œuvre, though not unheard of – another instance of this rare usage is the Pietà that was offered at Christie's, London, 10 July 2015, lot 155, also painted on pine. Otherwise Morales' panel paintings largely consist of hardwood supports – oak, walnut or chestnut, which were more commonly used in the artistic practices of the two Western Spanish cities in which Morales worked, Plasencia and Badajoz, whereas pinewood was more closely associated with the nearby region of Castile. Morales evidently experimented with supports, however, as is evidenced by an Ecce Homo of slightly larger dimensions on copper (private collection, Madrid).5 His choice of that support may also have been inspired by Flemish examples, such as devotional works on copper by Marcellus Coffermans (1520–1578), which Morales may have encountered in Seville.
We are grateful to Dr Isabel Mateo Gómez for endorsing the attribution to Morales on the basis of a digital image.
1 83.7 x 59.5 cm.; I. Mateo Gómez, ‘Nueva aportación a la obra de Morales: cronología, soportes y réplicas’, in Archivo Español de Arte, vol. 8, no. 350, 2015, pp. 132–33, reproduced in colour fig. 1.
3 I. Bäcksbacka, Luis de Morales, Helsinki 1962, p. 189, no. A21, reproduced fig. 156 (under ‘Doubtful Paintings’). Bäcksbacka lists two sets of dimensions for this painting: 36 x 26 cm. and 52 x 40 cm., the former corresponding to the present work. Colnaghi associated that entry and the Adanero provenance with this painting, but even allowing for changes in appearance due to cleaning, the number of compositional differences (the position of the left-hand side of the rope; the number of notches on the cane; the position of the wounds in Christ’s forehead; the amount of space between Christ’s neck and shoulder and the cane) preclude their being one and the same.
4 A. Palomino, Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors, trans. N.A. Mallory, Cambridge 1987, p. 38.
5 41.7 x 31.7 cm.; Mateo Gómez 2015, p. 135, reproduced in colour fig. 7.
