School of Luis de Morales

School of LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, 1509 - Alcántara, 1586); circa 1600.
"Ecce Homo".
Oil on canvas.
It presents faults and restorations.
Measurements: 50 x 52,5 cm.
Due to the closeness of the subject and the treatment, it is considered an artist from the workshop of the Flemish-Andalusian master. With his meticulous workmanship and tenebrist light, he transmits the Passionary moment with his masterly handling of chiaroscuro, having learnt the teachings of Morales (see the Ecce Homos conserved in the Prado Museum or in the Staatliche Kunstsammlunguen Museum in Dresden). Luis de Morales is considered one of the Spanish painters of the second half of the 16th century. His training poses serious problems, although Palomino describes him as a disciple of the Flemish painter who lived in Seville between 1537 and 1563. His use of colouring and sfumato is related to the Lombard tradition of a Bernardino Luini and a Cristoforo Solario, whom he probably met not on a trip to Italy but possibly to Valencia, in order to become acquainted with the innovations of the Leonardo painters Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos and the Raphaelesque painters Vicente and Juan Masip. However, the most personal aspect of his painting lies in the tormented, almost hysterical atmosphere in which his figures breathe, more focused on an intense inner life than on action, full of melancholy and ascetic renunciation and characteristic of the climate of tense religiosity imposed in 16th-century Spain by the reform movements, from the less orthodox Erasmianism and Alumbradism to the more genuine mysticism and Trentism. Morales, called the Divine by his first biographer, Antonio Palomino, because he painted only religious subjects with great delicacy and subtlety, reached his peak from 1550 to 1570, when he painted numerous altarpieces, He painted numerous altarpieces, triptychs and isolated canvases that were widely distributed because they satisfied the popular religiosity of the time, although some of his canvases contain quotations and information of learned erudition, the result of his contact with enlightened clients, first and foremost the bishops of the diocese of Badajoz, in whose service he worked.