Lot 285: FERNANDO LLANOS ACTIVE IN VALENCIA CIRCA 1506 - 1516

FERNANDO LLANOS ACTIVE IN VALENCIA CIRCA 1506 - 1516

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST, ATTENDED BY ANGELS

measurements note
63.2 by 49.7 cm.; 24 7/8 by 19 1/2 in.

oil on panel, unframed

NOTE

The corpus of identified works by Fernando Llanos is relatively small and paintings by the artist very rarely come to the market. Like many Valencian Renaissance paintings, the present work has long languished under an erroneous attribution to the Italian school, no doubt a result of the over-riding influence of Leonardo clearly visible in the figure and compositional types. The recent emergence of this work and the re-establishment of its correct authorship makes this a rare addition to the oeuvre of a Valencian artist whose production was instrumental in the introduction of the Italian Renaissance to Spain.

Relatively little is known about the life of Fernando Llanos. A 'Fernando Spagnolo' is recorded as receiving payment for work on Leonardo's cartoon of The Battle of Anghiari in 1505, although it is unclear as to which (if either) of the Fernandos this refers. Whilst a trip to Italy during his formative years seems highly plausible, a number of key Lombard paintings were already in Spain by this date and large folios of drawings and engravings were held in the workshops throughout Spain. For the majority of his working career however Llanos collaborated with his fellow Valencian painter Fernando Yañez, their crowning achievement being their celebrated altarpiece of 1507, painted for the Cathedral in Valencia and still in place today.

The style of the present work is entirely consistent with other paintings produced by Llanos during his stay in Murcia from 1514-16, by which date his collaboration with Fernando Yañez had come to an end and both painters had begun to develop their own divergent styles. A close comparison of the present work with Llanos' painting of The Adoration of the Shepherds, today in the Museo Diocesano, Murcia (see Los Hernandos, exhibition catalogue, Valencia, Museo de Bellas Artes, 5 March - 5 May 1998, pp. 148-51, no. 22, reproduced p. 149) reveals a number of common characteristics. Both paintings share the same facial type of the Virgin (which is more idealised than the more naturalistic type found in the altarpiece of Valencia Cathedral); the beautifully observed wings of the angels; and the figures' distinctive elongated arms and hands. Also belonging to the same moment in the artist's production is a painting of The Marriage of the Virgin, today in the Museo Diocesano, Murcia (op. cit., pp. 140-3, no. 20, reproduced p. 141) which reveals the same distinctive (crushed silk-like) treatment of the drapery - something of a hallmark of the artist's work. Often to be found in works of this date is the repetition of a motif or type found in the great altarpiece in Valencia and in this sense the present work is no exception; the pose and drapery of the upper half of the Virgin echoes that in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt (see ibid., pp. 78-81, no. 74, reproduced p. 79).

We are grateful to Dr. Fernando Benito Doménech for confirming the attribution to Fernando Llanos on the basis of photographs.