LUIS DE MORALES | PIETÀ

Acquired in Badajoz, Extremadura, by Ramón Cepeda Montero, circa 1870;

Thence by descent.

This exceptional, unpublished panel of the Pietà is a notable addition to the œuvre of perhaps the greatest Spanish devotional painter of the sixteenth century, Luis de Morales. The artist fulfilled the need amongst the fervently religious at that time for highly spiritual devotional works and such was his success that his legacy was ensured through his posthumous labelling with the epithet 'El Divino'. The origins of his style are complex and indeed difficult to establish, but the clarity of form and harmonious interplay of his compositions in the manner of Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci would indicate the influence of italianising Flemish painters working in Spain, of which there were many. Indeed, if Palomino is to be believed, Morales received his initial training in the Seville workshop of the Fleming Pieter de Kempeneer (known in Spain as Pedro de Campaña).

Morales painted exclusively religious subjects and the majority of his œuvre is comprised of depictions of the Virgin and Child, the Pietà, and Christ as the Man of Sorrows, Christ at the Column or Christ carrying the Cross. Unusually for an artist who painted numerous versions of certain subjects, including other versions of the Pietà, the present composition is unique in his work, it being the only fully autograph version of this particular design in which a beautifully elongated Virgin is seen delicately cradling the recently crucified Christ, His head resting on her left arm and her right hand delicately grasping His right shoulder. In his Arte de la pintura, the artist and writer Francesco Pacheco (1564–1644) wrote that Morales’ depictions of this subject were so poignant that they ‘could move stones to devotion’. The particularly fine preservation of this panel adds to its visual impact, the porcelain-like skin tones and starkly-lit cross set off beautifully by the jet-black background.

NOTE ON PROVENANCE

The painting was acquired by an antecedent of the present owner in the late nineteenth century in Badajoz, Morales' hometown. It seems quite possible therefore that the painting remained in the same town for the first three hundred years of its life, and beyond, only moving to the city of Madrid relatively recently. This evidently undisturbed existence may explain the painting's excellent state of preservation.