Attributed to Bartolomé Pérez

Attributed to BARTOLOMÉ PÉREZ DE LA DEHESA (Madrid, ca. 1634-1698).
"Orla de flores con Virgen".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 98.5 x 74 cm; 118 x 106 cm (frame).
This painting follows one of the compositional schemes that was most popular during the Spanish Baroque: the religious theme is surrounded by a garland of sensual flowers, whose prominence is not less than that of the central theme. The hand of Bartolomé Pérez is recognizable in the way of resolving the varied bouquets of cheerful colors, in which a dense brushstroke of brilliant pigment has been used. The chromatic juiciness of the floral piece advances rococo aesthetic solutions, which break symmetry and tend to horror vacui. The painter has frozen the moment of maximum maturity of the flower, prior to its decay. The enormous corollas dwarf the central image, in which the Immaculate Conception is represented on a great cloud populated with cherub heads. The freedom of workmanship and vigorous brushstroke are reminiscent of the work of the master from Madrid.

Specializing in the floral genre, Dehesa achieved unusual mastery in this type of work. This painter from Madrid received numerous court commissions. Bartolomé Pérez Dehesa trained with Juan de Arellano, who later became his father-in-law when he married his daughter Juana in 1663. He specialized in painting flowers and garlands, the latter including religious scenes and depictions of saints. The Prado Museum has twenty-three works of this type from the royal collection, the Museum of the Trinity and the donation of the duchess widow of Pastrana in 1889. He excelled as a decorative painter, participating in the ornamentation of the ephemeral arches made for the entrance of Queen Maria Luisa de Orleans, first wife of Charles II, in 1679 and in the scenographies for the theaters of the Alcazar and the Buen Retiro. These works earned him the appointment of painter of the king on January 22, 1689. Months later, he began to execute fifty-five paintings of flowers on the panels with gilded backgrounds of the walls and ceiling of the so-called "Camón dorado" of Charles II in the Alcázar of Madrid, of which only one painting is preserved in a private collection.