Follower of Juan de Valdés Leal

Follower of JUAN DE VALDÉS LEAL (Seville, 1622 - 1690); XVIII century.
"Saint Jerome".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents faults.
Measurements: 103 x 83 cm.
The painting represents San Jerónimo in the act of writing the Bible, a habitual subject, but that here is interpreted with the expressive force and the characteristic dramatism of the models of Juan de Valdés Leal. The saint appears in a dark landscape, ascetically austere, leaning on a wooden stump where he rests the sacred text, while his face, with an intense expression and exalted look, turns towards a celestial trumpet that bursts from the upper corner. The work, of notable mystical and visually energetic charge, channels the Spanish counter-reformist tradition through an energetic pictorial language, of loose and emphatic brushstrokes, faithful to the visionary and moralizing spirit of Valdés Leal.
We do not know when Valdés moved to Córdoba, although it is likely that he had already received his first artistic training in his native city. It has been speculated that he was close to the workshop of Herrera el Viejo, and also to the art of the Cordovan Antonio del Castillo, as possible influences for his first known signed and dated work. In it he combined with visible success the monumentality of the figure of the saint with a naturalistic approach. In 1656 he settled in Seville, where he spent most of his life. In 1660 he was one of the founders of the Academy of Drawing, of which he became president in 1663. The following year Palomino established his trip to the court and to El Escorial, a journey that can still be understood as an apprenticeship, driven by his eagerness to know the works of the great masters present in the royal collections. In 1667 he joined the Brotherhood of Charity in Seville, whose founder was Miguel de Mañara. In 1672 he was in Cordoba, an occasion that Palomino took advantage of to meet him personally. This gives more value to the affirmation of the Cordovan treatise writer on the literary interest of Valdés Leal, since he makes him possessor of "the ornament of all the good letters, without forgetting those of poetry".