“Inmaculada”. JUAN SÁNCHEZ COTAN

JUAN SÁNCHEZ COTAN (Orgaz, Toledo, 1560 - Granada, 1627).
"Immaculate Conception.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has slight repainting.
Exhibitions: "The Baroque in painting". CajaSur, Cordoba, December 2004 - January 2005.
Bibliography: Pareja López, Enrique: "El Barroco en la pintura". Exhibition catalogue. Publications Obra Social y Cultural Cajasur, 2004. pp. 176-177.
Sizes: 145.5 x 104 cm; 169 x 128 cm (frame).
This oil on canvas represents the Virgin as a young woman with long golden hair in a prayerful attitude, a common iconographic model in this Counter-Reformation period. All the elements surrounding the Virgin correspond to the titles of honour glossed in the litanies. The colours used by the painter also correspond to a pre-established symbolism: the tunic is in hyacinth, the colour of purity, and the mantle is an intense sky blue, the colour of eternity.
It should be related to the Inmaculada painted by Sánchez Cotán around 1617-1618 for the Cartuja de la Asunción in Granada, published in Orozco Díaz, E.: Las Vírgenes de Sanchez Cotán. Granada, 1954, pp. 54-58, nº 12 and Orozco Díaz, E.: El Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada. Guides to the Museums of Spain. Num. XXVI, Madrid, 1966, p. 42. This one of the Cartuja is the clear model of the Inmaculada which we present here; Orozco says of it... He repeated it many times, either as a literal copy, or with slight variations, in large and small. It must have pleased the city and left its mark... so it is not surprising to find Immaculate Conception inspired by the one in the Charterhouse like the one we present here.
As for its style, we can appreciate some archaic features for its time, such as the hieratic and frontal nature of the figure. However, the quality of Cotán's painting in the small details such as the gemstones on the cloak, the vegetal embroidery on the tunic and the flowers, all link the work to the proto-baroque naturalism which the painter so masterfully captured in his still lifes.
Juan Sánchez Cotán worked in Toledo, where he had an important clientele, until 1603, when he entered the Carthusian monastery as a lay brother and settled in Granada. The bulk of his oeuvre from that time onwards consisted of paintings of religious subjects, particularly the very numerous ones he produced for the charterhouse in Granada, although he also produced portraits and landscapes. However, he is best known for his still lifes, especially since the exhibition "Floreros y bodegones en la pintura española" ("Vases and Still Lifes in Spanish Painting") was held in Madrid in 1935, which was a key event in the critical reappraisal of the Spanish still life and made Sánchez Cotán one of its cornerstones. Sánchez Cotán enjoyed a comfortable life in Toledo, commissioning religious paintings for churches as well as other minor works, such as painting the arms of the archbishop of Toledo on a cobbler's armoury. However, the documentation does not mention any disciples or assistants. It was also around this time that he produced the aforementioned copies of Venetian works, as well as some landscapes. His works from this period reveal a fully developed, refined and gentle style derived from the painters of the El Escorial school, which remained virtually unchanged throughout his career. Works by Sánchez Cotán are now in the Museo del Prado, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Granada, the Museo de San Diego in California, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection in Princeton (USA), the Bowes Museum in Durham, UK, and other collections.

Exposiciones: "El Barroco en la pintura". CajaSur, Córdoba, diciembre 2004 - enero 2005.
Bibliografía: Pareja López, Enrique: "El Barroco en la pintura”. Catálogo de exposición. Publicaciones Obra Social y Cultural Cajasur, 2004. pags. 176-177.