Spanish school; late sixteenth century. "Christ Carrying the Cross". Oil on panel.

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OLD MASTERS

By Setdart Auction House

Jul 14, 2021

Set Reminder 2021-07-14 06:30:00 2021-07-14 06:30:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : OLD MASTERS https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/setdart-auction-house/old-masters-7202
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• Lot Description
  Spanish school; late sixteenth century. "Christ Carrying the Cross". Oil on panel. It presents repainting, painting jumps, inscriptions on the back and restorations. Measures: 44 x 31 cm. The images of Christ carrying the cross in his ascent to Mount Calvary were relatively frequent in the Christian iconography, and since the early Christian art there are examples that are linked to texts where reference is made to the symbolic role of the cross as an instrument of salvation and attainment of eternal life. The theme of this one may derive from the Expolio, perhaps planned to be a series that completely addressed the passion of Christ. In this case there is no aesthetic reference to the path that Jesus walked, but the author has decided to collect a scene devoid of the anecdotal. Focusing the viewer's attention only on the bust, especially on the face of Jesus, and his heaviness when carrying the Cross. Spain is, at the beginning of the 16th century, the European nation best prepared to receive the new humanist concepts of life and art because of its spiritual, political and economic conditions, although from the point of view of the plastic forms, its adaptation of those implanted by Italy was slower due to the need to learn the new techniques and to change the taste of the clientele. Painting reflects perhaps better than other artistic fields this eagerness to return to the classical Greco-Roman world that exalts in its nudes the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality surpasses mere copying. Soon the anatomy, the movement of the figures, the compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of the folds, the classical attitudes of the figures began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintains the expressiveness as a vehicle of the deep spiritualistic sense that informs our best Renaissance sculptures. This strong and healthy tradition favors the continuity of religious painting in polychrome wood that accepts the formal beauty offered by Italian Renaissance art with a sense of balance that avoids its predominance over the immaterial content that animates the forms. In the first years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our artists went to Italy, where they learned first hand the new norms in the most progressive centers of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, and even in Naples. Upon their return, the best of them will revolutionize Spanish art, even advancing the new mannerist, intellectualized and abstract derivation of the Italian Cinquecento, almost at the same time that it is produced in Italy.
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