Lot 272: Attributed to Juan Rodriguez de Solis (active Le¢n c.1575)

The martyrs of Mount Ararat oil on panel 93/4 x 20 in. (24.8 x 50.8 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 2 December 1976, lot 91. George P. Harding, Chicago, by whom given to the Museum in 1984. LITERATURE C.P. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, Cambridge, 1941, IX, part II, p. 542, fig. 209. J.A. Gaya-Nuno, La Pintura Espa¤ola Fuera de Espa¤a, Madrid, 1958, no. 2492. NOTES The legend of the martyrdom of the Roman centurion and his 10,000 legionnaires on Mount Ararat has been transformed here into a scene with three men, naked except for loincloths and crowns of thorns, spitted on the spiny branches of three bare trees. Standing beside the trees is Saint Acacius carrying a crozier and wearing a mitre and other pontifical vestments.