Clemente Pujol de Gustavino

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This panel is un-reinforced on the reverse. The panel is flat and stable and the paint layer is well preserved. The paint layer has been cleaned and varnished. A few retouches have been applied to the beard of the third member of the seated group on the left, in the face of the standing guard next to him and to, a few spots around the beards of two or three of the figures on the right side. These are isolated and unique spots, which indicate that the picture in general is in beautiful condition.
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This richly detailed painting by Clemente Pujol de Gustavino exhibits the qualities for which an entire school of Spanish Orientalism would become renowned: saturated hues, intricate yet never exhaustively studied or overwrought ornamentation, and a vibrancy and sense of movement that is evoked as much in the arrested gestures of figures as in the self-assured facture of the artist.

Specific to Pujol de Gustavino are the inclusion of a distinctive Moorish arch (here given added visual appeal by its deeply scalloped edge), which serves to set the scene geographically, and the subject of an introduction or meeting, taking place in its shadow (see: Le visiteur honoré, Sotheby's New York: Thursday, October 23, 1997, lot 52). Typical too is the slow unfolding of a dramatic - even theatrical - narrative, to which each incidental detail adds meaning and value.  Here, for example, though the title of the work is demure, de Gustavino's inclusion of a diaphanous piece of fabric, dropped gently to the floor, evokes a more provocative theme: the dance of the seven veils.  In popular culture, this dance is believed to have been performed by the beautiful Salomé for her stepfather Herod, as described in the Bible (Matthew 14:6-11, Mark 6:21-28). In the Bible, however, the dance is not named, and no veils are mentioned; it was only in 1891, with Oscar Wilde's play Salome, that these aspects of the story would appear, and Orientalist painters would seize upon the subject.