Andalusian school early eighteenth century.

Andalusian School early eighteenth century.
"Christ followed by the Angels".
Oil on canvas.
It retains the original canvas and has restorations.
Measurements: 93 x 127 cm; 102 x 136 cm (frame).
The present work, belonging to the Andalusian school of the early eighteenth century and made in oil on canvas, represents the Gospel episode of Christ served by the angels after the temptations in the desert, one of the most unique and less frequented themes of the Baroque Christological iconography. Inspired by the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the scene shows the moment when, after the forty-day fast is over and the devil's temptations have been overcome, Christ receives the comfort and service of the angels. The painting transforms this episode into a profoundly theatrical and sensorial vision, where the heavenly and the human merge through a staging of intense emotion and refined decorative exuberance. The subject would enjoy a certain fortune in Andalusian Baroque painting.
The composition is articulated by means of a complex diagonal disposition, dynamized by the circulation of angels and cherubs that surround the figure of Christ in a continuous movement. The interest of the work resides especially in the synthesis of different aesthetic currents of the late Andalusian baroque. On the one hand, the painting clearly shows the Murillesque heritage in the infantile types of the cherubs, with soft and rosy anatomies, as well as in the atmospheric softness of the lights and in the kindly grace of the angelic faces. The chromatic range, dominated by warm ochers, bright carmines and deep blues, also recalls the chromatic solutions spread by the Sevillian circle of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, especially in the scenes of celestial and devotional themes. However, along with this sweetness inherited from Murillo, the work develops a fully baroque and late baroque language in the theatricalization of space and in the taste for ornamental accumulation. The scenic arrangement recalls models spread in Andalusia by the decorative painting of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where the Italian and Flemish influence had consolidated more open, dynamic and dramatic compositions.
The painting can be related to the anonymous canvas preserved in the Museum of Malaga entitled Christ served by angels, also attributed to a baroque Andalusian environment. Both compositions share not only the rare iconographic theme, but also the desire to turn the Gospel episode into a courtly and celestial scene of great visual apparatus.