Macip's Obrador

MACIP'S WORKSHOP (Valencia, 16th century)
VICENTE MACIP (ca. 1475-1550) and JOAN DE JOANES (ca. 1507-1579)
"Virgin of the Milk, with angel and San Juanito".
Oil on panel.
Cradled.
A version of this painting is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia.
With frame of the seventeenth century, carved and gilded wood.
Measurements: 70 x 58 cm; 91 x 78 cm (frame).

This devotional painting, made in the workshop of the Masip family (Vicent Macip and his son Joan de Joanes), is a representative example of the Valencian school of the 16th century, characterized by the technical delicacy, the softness of the faces and the refined Renaissance spirituality impregnated with a subtle mysticism inherited from both the Flemish tradition and the Italian Raphaelesque painting.

The Masip family made several versions of this work, and one of them is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia.

The scene shows the Virgin Mary in the act of breastfeeding the Infant Jesus, an iconographic motif known as the Virgin of the Milk or Virgin Lactans. Mary, with a serene and sweet countenance, directs her gaze towards her son while carefully holding him. The Child appears naked, reinforcing the idea of humanity and vulnerability, while he clings tenderly to his mother's breast. Around him, an archangel holds a cross, and St. John the Baptist, a child (in his camel skin), interacts with Jesus, underlining the prefiguration of the redemptive sacrifice. The mountainous background and the sober architecture suggest an idealized space, where the earthly becomes the stage for the sacred.

The golden nimbuses, richly decorated with punching, refer to the Gothic heritage still latent in Hispanic devotional painting, while the pyramidal composition and the classical serenity reveal the assimilation of Italian Renaissance models. The proportions are volumetric and the faces delicately modeled, with soft flesh tones and looks full of affection. The folds of the Virgin's blue mantle and the orange-red of her tunic denote the taste for intense color and the chromatic richness typical of the Valencian school.

Vicent Macip (c. 1475-1550) and his son Joan de Joanes (c. 1507-1579) are key figures in Valencian Renaissance painting. Vicent was trained in the Hispano-Flemish tradition and Joan de Joanes masterfully introduced the language of the Italian High Renaissance, inspired by Raphael, into the local context. Works like this one combine the intimate devotion of medieval painting with the ideal of Renaissance beauty. The Masip workshop cultivated this type of images for private and parochial devotion, pieces that served both to instruct and to spiritually move the faithful.

Joan de Joanes was trained in his father's workshop, which has made it difficult to attribute early works before 1550, the year of his father's death. Although there is speculation as to whether he studied in Italy due to the influence of painters such as Sebastiano del Piombo on his work, most historians believe that he never left Spain, absorbing these influences through foreign works that reached the Kingdom of Valencia. He was the most important painter in the Valencia of his time, in contact with humanist circles. He devoted himself almost exclusively to religious iconography. In works such as "La Virgen con el Niño y San Juanito" or the "Sagrada Familia" by Joan de Joanes, the affectionate interaction between the Virgin and the children, the presence of attributes of the Passion and the atmosphere of pious recollection are repeated.

Overall, this painting is a paradigmatic example of Valencian devotional art of the Cinquecento, which fuses tradition and renewal, austerity and gentleness, in a deeply humanized and pious iconography.