Saints and Bishops with Knights of Military Orders, in Glory
1885. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
This is a preparatory sketch intended for the decoration of the Royal Basilica of Saint Francis the Great in which Salvador Martínez Cubells participated with the pictorial representation of the copula interior of the chapel of the Sacred Hearts. Some studies on canvas of parts of that work have survived (all of them unknown until 2003) which allow us to imagine the final state of this painting, which is practically lost.
The composition has a historical development along the cupola interior and is polarised by two figures that diametrically mark its axis: Saint John the Baptist and Saint James. In this sketch, dedicated to the composition of Saint James, we see numerous figures of sacred appearance but almost impossible to identify. They are arranged almost like figurants. Three canvas studies of them are extant, in addition to this one and a pair in the basilica of San Francisco, that depict Knights and Monks with a Standard and a detail of A Monk and Two Knights which is a preparatory drawing intended for one of the groups of figures that appears in the last sketch mentioned in the Prado. The composition adopted in the final model appears announced in another sketch related to the work, Apparition of the Apostle Saint James to Saints and Knights of the Military Orders (P007576), in which we see remarkable modifications in the group of these figures. In general, the entire group of these sketches provides us an approximate idea of the prospective result of one cupola interior, now practically lost.
