Juan Correa de Vivar

JUAN CORREA DE VIVAR (Mascaraque, Toledo, c. 1510 - 1566).
"St. Peter Martyr.
Oil on panel.
Work published in the Archivo de Arte Español LXXXIV, 336. October-December. 2011 by Doña Isabel Gómez Mateo.
Attached pigment analysis by SGS and publication by Doña Isabel Gómez Mateo.
Measurements: 46.5 x 37.5 cm; 62 x 50 cm (frame).
Following the words of the expert Doña Isabel Gómez Mateo about this panel "Among the most fruitful stages of the work of the Toledo painter Juan Correa de Vivar, is the one developed between 1535 and 1545. During these years the painter carried out, among other works, the painting of the altarpiece of Meco, in the province of Madrid, the miniatures in the Breviary of Charles V, preserved in El Escorial, and the various altarpieces with which he decorated the Cistercian monastery of San Martín de Valdeiglesias, distributed because of the disentailment in the Prado Museum and, as a deposit of this, in various provincial museums, in addition to those that passed to private collections in Spain and abroad.
During this period the painter often boasts of decorating his architectures using marble columns in green or red tones that contrast with the white of the rest of the building, as for example in the Epiphany of the altarpiece of Meco, and of embellishing portals using elements of Bramante, as in the "Beautiful Door", where the Healing of the paralytic by St. Peter takes place, which was part of a small altarpiece in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, and which is currently in the museum of Malaga. Also in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, in the panels of the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, the painter enhances the portico of the convent with two bodies of columns. Another contribution of the painter in this stage is to infuse his figures with a certain rhythm of cadenced movement close to Mannerism. All the characteristics that we have pointed out in Correa's work of that period coincide with those of the small panel (46.5 × 37.5 cm), in a private collection in Madrid, representing Christ walking with the cross along a road and turning towards a Dominican friar who comes out to meet him, kneeling, in a prayerful attitude, at the door of the convent. The model of Christ's head is exact to the one used by Correa for the Saint Martin sharing his cloak with a poor man, by Valdeiglesias . There is no doubt that the small panel that we present today represents in Correa's work, a work of quality and commitment, to cover the private devotion of a Dominican client, devotee of Saint Peter Martyr, who in this case occupies the place of Saint Peter the Apostle in the passage of the Quo Vadis, to which we will refer later. It is possible that it is a portrait of the Dominican represented, due to the individual characters of his face and the absence of the nimbus, always present in the representations of the saint, remember those of Pedro Berruguete and Juan de Borgoña, in the Prado. The movement of Christ's body is typical of Correa of these years, but we want to call attention to the similarity of the movement of the feet, with those of the female figure that accompanies the San Marcos of Alonso Berruguete, dated in 1526, for the altarpiece of San Benito de Valladolid, a movement that Correa will repeat in the angel of the Annunciation of the Prado, and that undoubtedly offers an ethereal sense to the figures. We have already alluded to the similarity between the Dominican scene with that of St. Peter the Apostle, when he meets Christ on the Appian Way, after fleeing Rome at the request of the Christians. Upon meeting Christ, St. Peter asks him "Quo Vadis?", and Christ replies "I have come to Rome to be crucified again", to which Peter replies "I will go back and follow you", realizing that the Lord was referring to his martyrdom, through which Christ suffered the Passion again. The iconography of Correa's little board must have been given to the painter by the Dominican commissioner, based on the Golden Legend, also by the Dominican Jacobo de Voragine, of which there are several manuscripts in Spain, one of which, the one preserved in the Royal Palace of Madrid, is dated 1452, the year in which Saint Peter Martyr was martyred. In the manuscript there are miniatures with scenes of the saint, the solo and his martyrdom, accompanied by others of the Creation. In the Legend of Voragine on St. Peter of Verona, he tells us the similarity that his martyrdom bears with the death of Christ, and how St. Peter in the ardor of his faith begs the Lord to drink in this life the Chalice of the Passion and, when he was killed, when he returned from Como to Milan, he repeats like Jesus "Lord into your hands I commend my soul". St. Peter Martyr was a great connoisseur of the Bible, a great defender of the faith, with a severe way of life, an inquisitor, and, for all this, he always aroused admiration among his brothers of the Dominican Order of Preachers. Therefore, we should not be surprised that it was entrusted to Correa by a Dominican friar who felt a particular devotion to St. Peter of Verona. We do not know to which convent it could have belonged, however, we are inclined to the convent of San Pedro Mártir of Toledo, since the architecture that appears in the background in Correa's small board, agrees with the description of the convent, when the Dominicans moved, from the primitive one of the Granadal, to the center of Toledo in the houses ceded by D.ª Guiomar de Meneses, adding smaller houses, wide patios and a public street. The marbled marble columns that decorate the main entrance of the temple in Correa's panel are topped by capitals that the painter used in other compositions of these years, inspired by models engraved in Las Medidas del Romano, by Diego Sagredo, published in Toledo in 1526, under the auspices of Cardinal Fonseca".