Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's Workshop

Workshop of BARTOLOME ESTEBAN MURILLO (Seville, 1617 - 1682).
"The apparition of the Virgin and Child to San Felix de Cantalicio".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It presents Repainting and restorations.
Measurements: 100 x 68 cm: 118 x 84 cm (frame).
This painting is a version of the painting of the same title that is in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. It depicts the miracle in which the Virgin appears to the saint to put the Child in his arms. It is an iconographic model of Italian origin, although it is Murillo who gives it its perfect form in this version of around 1665-1668. The original painting of the master is of large dimensions - 283 by 188 cms - and has the Catalog No. 199 of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. This is one of the sixteen works made by the Sevillian master for the Capuchin convent in Seville. In the paintings dedicated to Franciscan saints - Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Felix Cantalicio and Saint Francis embracing the cross - the softness of lights and colors, harmonizing without violence the brown of the Franciscan habit with the greenish or illuminated backgrounds intensify the intimate character of his mystical visions, stripped of all dramatism. Saint Felix is the patron saint of the lay brothers, and had been canonized during the years when the Capuchins of Seville took charge of the chapel that bears his name. It is a painting of gentle, soft forms with a certain pictorial richness that reminds us of Leonardo's sfumato although at the same time it already points to rococo. It seems reasonable to maintain that its beauty was so appreciated that Murillo's workshop received requests to make copies of it in smaller canvases for the residences of the Andalusian nobility or the local bourgeoisie. Very few artists in the second half of the seventeenth century were able to escape the influence of Murillo. Some of them were his disciples and even important Flemish painters. Of the direct disciples the best known and closest is Francisco Meneses Osorio, who completed the work just begun by Murillo in the altarpiece of the Capuchins of Cadiz. Cornelius Shut, originally from Antwerp, painter who lived many years in Seville and became president of the Academy of Fine Arts of Seville has left us several drawings of great influence of the master and moved firmly within his circle of influence. Other painters of the time who followed his style were Valdés Leal, Francisco Herrera el Mozo or Zurbarán himself. Some of his most important disciples - great followers of Murillo's style - who could be authors of this work are Francisco Meneses Osorio, Matías de Arteaga, Francisco Polanco, Ignacio de Ries and the Granada-born Sebastián Gómez, about whom a legend was woven that made him Murillo's "slave painter", probably to draw a parallel with Velázquez and Juan de Pareja. Likewise, linked to Murillo's painting, without being able to specify the exact degree of personal or professional relationship were Esteban Márquez de Velasco, of whom some works of a certain quality very influenced by the master, with Alonso Miguel de Tovar and Bernardo Lorente Germán, the painter of the Divinas Pastoras, the influence of Murillo goes into the first half of the eighteenth century. Both of them, together with Domingo Martínez, Murillo's taste for the delicate and tender, served the court during their stay in Seville from 1729 to 1733, a moment of glory for Murillo's painting given the fondness shown by Queen Isabel de Farnesio, who bought as many works as she could, including many of those that are currently preserved by his hand in the Prado Museum. At that time, none of his genre paintings remained in Seville and Palomino wrote, with some dismay, since what was valued was the sweetness of the color rather than the drawing, that "so today, outside Spain, a painting by Murillo is valued more than one by Titian, or Van-Dyck. Among the painters who worked in the transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century faithfully following Murillo's style, Juan Simón Gutiérrez stands out. We know that he worked in Seville for more than half a century and therefore his artistic production must have been very abundant although only three signed works have come down to us. The Death of Saint Dominic, today in Seville, the Virgin with the Augustinian Saints, in a convent of the Trinity in Carmona and a Holy Family in the Recoletas of Medina Sidonia, his hometown. We believe that it is possible that this is one of his works that shows a personal style within the Murillo style, especially in the remains of his characters that have allowed us to identify unsigned works by his hand. Murillo's success lies in the kind character of his models, which responds to a sensibility that moves away from the baroque and approaches the softness and kindness, the sweetness, the delicate and sentimental of the rococo. In any case and in spite of not being possible to affirm the authorship with absolute accuracy, this Virgin and San Félix Cantalicio is a significant work of excellent quality based on a model of the master, being that the works of Juan Simón Gutiérrez and other painters of his orbit and his disciples were so abundant, of such great quality and so similar to those of Murillo that it is very difficult to attribute them firmly to each painter and often they have been erroneously attributed to the master.

COMMENTS

It presents Repainting and restorations.
This lot can be seen at the Setdart Madrid Gallery located at C/Velázquez, 7.