Lot 17: Luis de Morales, el Divino (? Badajoz c. 1520-?1586)

The Virgin and Child
oil on panel
23 3/8 x 17 in. (59.3 x 43.1 cm.)

The present unpublished panel would appear to be the earliest extant version by Morales of this highly successful composition. Other autograph versions may be found in the Adanero collection, Madrid; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and in the Balanzó collection, Barcelona (see I. Bäcksbacka, Luis de Morales, Helsinki, 1962, nos. 76, 77 and 75 respectively). In a recent letter, Isabel Mateo has suggested a date for the present work of circa 1539-49, the years when Morales was active in the workshop he had established in Badajoz. During this period, Morales received documented commissions from the Spanish court, from other members of the nobility in Castile and Andalucia and, significantly, from the King of Portugal and the Duke of Braganza.

The present Virgen del Sombrero is typical of the small-scale devotional images in which Morales represented scenes from the life of Christ. Throughout his career, Morales repeated these compositions, and while often he would introduce changes - altering the pose of a figure or the drapery - the facial types tend to remain the same. However, although he went on to paint several other autograph versions of this particular theme, the Virgin's features in the present painting are unlike those in the later repetitions, and the distinctive red colour of Her hair is also unique in his oeuvre. According to Mateo, the Virgin in this panel is a deliberate likeness of the Empress Elizabeth of Portugal, here portrayed a lo divino, alongside her infant son, the future Philip II. This convention of portraying royal personages in the guise of members of the Holy Family is not uncommon in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain (see, for example, the Annunciation by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, where the Virgin is a portrait of Queen Margarita, and Gabriel is in fact her daughter Ana).

Mateo points out the strong physical resemblance between the Virgin in this painting and the Empress Elizabeth, who died in 1539, as portrayed in Titian's celebrated posthumous portrait of 1548, in the Prado, Madrid (fig. 1). Mateo also cites a pair of now lost paintings by the Portuguese artist Antonio de Holanda, who had been summoned to Toledo in 1529 to paint Charles V and his Empress, who asked to be portrayed a lo divino as a Madonna, with her infant son, the heir to the throne. This reference was first published by M.J. Redondo Cantera in Artistas y otros oficios suntuarios al servicio de la emperatriz Isabel de Portugal, Valladolid, 2004. Mateo hypothesises that Morales might well have seen the portraits by Antonio de Holanda on a visit to Toledo, and copied the likeness of Elizabeth, incorporating it into his composition, much as Titian has used an earlier likeness of the same sitter in his own portrait. She suggests that Morales may have executed the present work as an act of homage to Philip II, with whom he had a lifelong relationship. As late as 1581, Philip made a special stop in Badajoz while travelling to Portugal, to visit the elderly artist, thereupon granting him a royal pension.

Infra-red reflectography of the present painting reveals extensive underdrawing, freely executed throughout, except beneath the Virgin's face, where the marks from pin-prick holes for transfer may be seen (fig. 2). This would seem to substantiate Mateo's assertion that Morales is here using another painting as a model for his portrait of Elizabeth.

We are grateful to Dr. Isabel Mateo Gómez for confirming the attribution to Morales and for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.