Morales, Luis de

Description:

Badajoz um 1510 - 1586
75,5 x 53 cm
Christ carrying the Cross. Oil/panel, old inventory label lower left.
Don D. Buenaventura Grasses Hernández, Barcelona, by 1917; Spanish private collection.
Literature:
Divino Morales, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1-13 May 1917, cat. no. 21, reproduced fig. 27; Catálogo (…) de la colección particular de D.B. Grasses Hernández, Barcelona 1918, cat. no. 14; J.A. Gaya Nuño, Luis de Morales, Madrid 1961, pp. 20 and 25, reproduced plate 12; I. Backsbacka, Luis de Morales, Helsinki 1962, p. 187, cat. no. A10, reproduced p. 314, figure 78 (under doubtful attributions); J.C. Aznar, Summa Artis. Historia Generale del Arte, Bd. XXIV, La Pintura Espanola des Siglo XVI, Madrid 1987, p. 470/472.
C. Solis Rodríguez, Luis de Morales, Badajoz 1999, p. 166, no. 7.
The typology of “Christ Carrying the Cross” presented here has been developed in Venice in the circle of Giovanni Bellini and kept up by Sebastiano del Piombo, of whom four versions have survived. One of them (today in St. Petersburg) was commissioned by the Spanish ambassador in Rome, Fernando de Silva, Count of Cifuentes and is probably a link to the same depiction of Luis de Morales, which is today in the Real Colegio Seminario de Corpus Christi -Museo in Valencia (Leticia Ruiz Gómez ed., The Divine Morales, exhib.-cat., Madrid Museo Nacional del Prado 2015, p. 190, cat. No. 55).
This iconography of “Christ Carrying the Cross” enjoyed strong demand in Spain during the Counter Reformation and along with the “Pieta” and “Ecce Homo” was one of the subjects of the Passion most widely treated by Luis de Morales. The present composition is known in at least three other autograph versions: one, which was commissioned directly from the artist by the Bishop of San Juan de Ribera during his tenure (1562-69), is now in the Museo del Patriarca, Valencia (Backsbacka, p. 166, cat. no. 37, p. 313, fig. 76); a second in the Convent of the Franciscan Clares in Montijo, Badajoz; and a third in the Colegiata de Osuna, Seville (op. cit., p. 167, cat. no. 38, p. 314, fig. 77).
The dependence of Morales’ treatment on Del Piombo’s painting was formerly considered to have been a further indication that Morales visited Italy. The afterwards appearance of documentation relating to the artist’s life from 1538 until his death in 1586 however implicates no reference to a stay in Italy, making this former hypothesis highly improbable. Indeed it is more likely that Morales knew of Del Piombo’s design through the spread of prints which were widely available within the artist’s workshops in Spain during the 16th century.
Although it is difficult to establish a clear chronology for the work of Morales, the version of "Christ Carrying the Cross" commissioned by Bishop San Juan de Ribera during his tenure from 1562 - 1569 (now in the Museo del Patriarca, Valencia), is generally considered to date from c. 1565, which provides a likely approximate date of execution for the present version.
When shown in the exhibition Divino Morales at the Museo del Prado in 1917, the present painting was exhibited together with three other works by Morales from the important collection of Don Buenaventura Grasses Hernández, representing “Calvary”, “The Resurrection” and “The Virgin and Child”.