This heroic full-length portrait presents the king under a red-and-gold curtain with a landscape in the background. He wears a crown and, under a blue tunic, armor. His right hand rests on the head of a lion whose paw rests, in turn, on the coat of arms of Castile and León, territories ruled by Henry IV. The arms are surrounded by pomegranate flowers with the slogan, AGRO DULCE, an insignia
In this representation of Saint John of Capistrano, the painter has faithfully followed his traditional iconography. Dressed in a Franciscan habit with a red cross on it, he stands beneath a shining star. He holds a standard created by Saint Bernardino of Sienna—John of Capistrano was his disciple when he entered the Order of Saint Francis— with the nails of Christ´s crucifixion and his IHS
While traditionally considered anonymous, this work has been linked to Alonso del Arco by Natividad Galindo, who pointed out its evident relation to the work of Pereda. Certain elements, such as the weapons or the skull, are worthy of Pereda´s mastery, but the angels at the top are closer to Del Arco´s models and clearly show this disciple´s evolution towards the high baroque&acu
Compositionally, this work can be considered parallel to Saint John of Capistrano (P5350), as both are large likenesses of Saints, both hold the Crucifix in the same way, and both have a small-scale representation of another scene in the background. The fact that both canvases are the same size and both depict Franciscan saints suggests they may have been commissioned together for one of the Franc
Born to an Austrian Catholic family, Juan Everardo Nithard (Falkenstein, 1607-Rome, 1681)became a Jesuit. His solid grounding in theology led Emperor Ferdinand III to appoint him confessor to his children, Leopold and Mariana, and when the latter married Philip IV, he accompanied her to Madrid in the same role. Widowed, Mariana became reagent for her son, Charles, until he came of age, and during
This is one of a series of four canvases mentioned by Ponz as having been sent to the Museo de la Trinidad (1800, I, fourth letter, paragraph 10): "The Convent of Saint Catherine, which is of the Shod Mercedarians, was enlarged by Archbishop Tenorio […]. There are four large paintings in the corners of the cloister, painted by Alonso del Arco." The inventories list only two (this one and The Behea
Drawn from the Apocalypse of Saint john, The Immaculate Conception is a frequent iconic subject in Spanish painting. In Madrid, especially during the second half of the 17th century, it was so frequently depicted that a specific and characteristic approach was developed. Years before he painted the present work, Alonso del Arco made a canvas on the same subject for the Jesuit Church of Alcal&aacut