Spanish or Italian school; 17th century.

Spanish or Italian school; XVII century.
"San Lorenzo".
Oil on alabaster.
Provenance: Former collection of Lerma.
Measurements. 16 x 13 cm; 26 x 23 x 2 x 2 cm (frame); 40 x 20 x 10 x 10 cm (support).
Devotional scene representing Saint Lawrence, deacon born in Aragon, near Huesca, and martyred in Rome in 258, his "Legendary Acts" narrate that Saint Lawrence, out of humility, washed the feet of the Christians, cured a widow of headache and gave sight to a blind man by means of baptism. Three days after the martyrdom of Pope Sixtus II, who had ordained him deacon and entrusted him with the treasure of the Church, he was arrested and ordered to hand over these riches. But there was nothing left of them, since Lorenzo had distributed them among the poor. Furious at seeing his greed frustrated, the emperor Decius ordered him to be flogged with rods, his ribs burned with a red-hot iron and, finally, to be spread naked on a gridiron placed over a mantle of coals.
Baroque painting is one of the most authentic and personal examples in the history of art, because its conception and form of expression arose from the people and the deepest feelings that nestled in them. With the economy of the State in ruins, the nobility in decline and the high clergy burdened with heavy taxes, it was the monasteries, parishes and confraternities of clerics and laymen who promoted its development, and the works were sometimes financed by popular subscription. Painting was thus forced to capture the prevailing ideals in these environments, which were none other than religious ones, at a time when the Counter-Reformation doctrine demanded from art a realistic language so that the faithful would understand and identify with what was represented, and an expression endowed with an intense emotional content to increase the fervor and devotion of the people. The religious subject is, therefore, the preferred theme of Spanish sculpture of this period, which in the first decades of the century began with a priority interest in capturing the natural, to progressively intensify throughout the century the expression of expressive values.