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The thin naked torso, the cloth made from rushes, the skull and the book suggest that the figure in the painting is a hermit; the bread crust in the foreground tells us that it is Saint Paul, the first hermit, who was brought half a loaf of bread every day by a raven.
Taken together, these three works clearly convey a Eucharistic meaning. They depict Christ holding up the chalice and the Host (P00844), flanked by two Old Testament figures: King Melchizedek, bearing bread and wine (P00853), and the priest Aaron with a jar of incense (P00854). The three panels were part of the tabernacle of the high altar in the church of the Birth of the Virgin in Fuente de la H
Sobre una tosca mesa de madera, descrita táctilmente con los pequeños detalles de la calidad del material, visibles en nudos y muescas, aparecen desordenadamente situadas unas cuantas “peritas de San Juan” y un pan en segundo término, junto al cual se eleva una alcarraza de loza muy blanca que bien pudiera ser andaluza. Se denomina popularmente “jarra de cuatro picos” y muestra una decoración de i
On August 29, 1626, King Philip IV’s painter, Vicente Carducho (ca. 1576-1638), signed a contract for the creation of a cycle of paintings to celebrate the founding of the Carthusian Order by Saint Bruno and its leading members. This colossal undertaking sought to visually narrate numerous episodes from the Carthusians’ history and tradition. It was the most complete commission ever dedicated to t
Two pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem meet a traveler, whom the invite to dinner. When their unknown guest blesses the bread on the table, they recognize that he is Christ resurrected. This story is taken from the Gospel of Luke (24, 13-55). The painter sets the scene in a space that is open to an architectural landscape, with a fortress and a Baroque building out of which a figure is leaning. Th
This highly original still life presents various oysters in the fore and middle grounds—a relatively infrequent element in Meléndez’s paintings. The foreground is completed by some cloves of garlic and a decorated ceramic plate, probably from Talavera. Behind them, the powerful volume of an enormous copper pot vies for the leading role in this composition. It is tilted, as one edge rests on
This is a singular example of David Teniers´ indoor scenes. The kitchen or tavern utensils so common in his other works are completed here with a magnificent show of diverse fruit and vegetables. This converts the right part of the composition into a still life. On the left, a character shells mussels, a traditional foodstuff in the Low Countries, while another group works beside the fireplace. Th
On 14 February 1612 Juan Bautista Maíno signed the contract to execute the paintings for the monastery church of San Pedro Mártir in Toledo. Maíno agreed to a period of eight months to make the paintings, which had to portray the scenes and episodes specified by the prior of the monastery. Despite the agreement reached in the contract, the paintings were not completed until De
This still life forms part of the group of paintings Vroom dubbed monochrome banketjes or monochrome still lifes which were started in 1629 by Willem Claesz. Heda, but which Pieter Claesz. cultivated with equal mastery, to the point that these two painters are considered its leading exponents. The work is dated 1637 and signed with Claesz´s typical monogram and the enigmatic word TÉNESIUS I
This work belongs to a series inspired by passages from Don Quixote portrayed with the same satirical humour as in Cervantes´text. The famous knight, seated at a table, is served by innkeepers in a parody of what would have been a court ceremony. Similarities have been pointed out with paintings of this type executed by the Madrid-based French artist Michel-Ange Houasse (1680-1730).
On a table partially covered by a green tablecloth, the painter has placed a white cloth, delicate gold-worked jars and glasses that reflect the light, a dish with ham, bread and a large basket of peaches and several types of grapes. There is also a half-peeled lemon, typical of Nordic still-lifes. In the background, there is a large red curtain and a gallery with columns. Charged with symbolic an
Painted for the base of the main altarpiece of San Esteban in Valencia (P00838, P00839, P00840, P00841 and P00842), Inspired by Leonardo, both in the definition of the space and in the eloquent expressiveness of the apostles, it also shows Juanes’s close relationship with Raphael. In keeping with traditional iconography in Spain, he focussed the scene on Jesus, serene and triumphant at the moment
With the owners or house servants away, the animals sneak into the larder, giving free rein to their instincts. This leads to a fight. Scenes of animal fights in domestic settings were customary in mid-seventeenth-century Flemish painting. They were also frequent in the literature of proverbs, where they were interpreted as moral allusions to the abandonment of responsibilities and their consequen
Fearing she was a victim of infidelity, Procris followed her beloved Cephalus to a clearing in the woods, where he was resting during a hunting expedition. The young woman´s jealousy led her to her death when Cephalus mistook her for wild game and shot her with an arrow. Rubens chose to depict that story from Ovid´s Metamorphoses in this preparatory sketch for a painting intended to decorate the T
Luis Meléndez distinguished himself as the greatest bodegón, or still-life, painter in late eighteenth-century Spain. By this time, the popularity of the genre had declined in Spain and was not practiced by any of Meléndez’ contemporaries at court. Even so, Meléndez painted over one hundred bodegones in his lifetime, leading art historians to infer that he took a person
Although Bettini noted a number of paternal precedents for this painting, it is a personal interpretation by Francesco of the gospel passage. Three versions are known, of which the Prado painting is the last. The first, dated about 1585, was auctioned by Sotheby´s of Florence in 1984, and there is a preparatory drawing of the figures of the elderly man with a bear and the page on the left (V
Se ve un plato, del tipo “castañuela”, de borde historiado -siguiendo un diseño popular- que posiblemente posea un origen talaverano; ejerce el papel de recipiente desbordado por las ciruelas, algunas en ramo, que lo colman. A un lado, sobre una servilleta doblada, una rosca de pan refleja con acierto el impacto de la luz; al otro, tres higos rellenan el vacío de la izquierda, procurando equilibra
