Juan Valdés Leal Circle

Circle of JUAN DE VALDÉS LEAL (Seville, 1622 - 1690); XVII century.
"Saint Thomas.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 78 x 47 cm.
The work channels the Spanish counter-reformist tradition through an energetic pictorial language, with a loose and emphatic brushstroke, following the stylistic influence of Valdés Leal's models, the models of the visionary and moralizing spirit of Valdés Leal.
We do not know at what date 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".