Francisco de Osona,

FRANCISCO DE OSONA (Valencia, c.1465 - c.1514).
"Christ".
Oil on gilded panel glued to board.
We are grateful for the invaluable help of Mr. José Gómez Frechina in the identification of the work.
It presents restorations.
Measurements: 39 x 26 cm.
Aesthetically this devotional panel is located at a key moment in Hispanic painting, when the language of international Gothic begins to dialogue with the first naturalistic conquests of the Renaissance. Conceived for private contemplation, the work presents Christ as Salvator Mundi, in a frontal bust of profound solemnity.
The image is constructed from a strict symmetry that reinforces its timeless character so sought after in the painting of the time. Christ's face, serene and restrained, conveys a silent melancholy that is intensified through the frontal gaze, capable of establishing a direct dialogue with the viewer. The hair and beard, resolved with fine and precise brushstrokes, reveal a marked taste for detail and an incipient desire for physiognomic individualization. The light flesh, modulated by delicate glazes, gives volume and humanity to the figure without breaking away from the hieratic frontality inherited from the Byzantine tradition.
The richly worked golden background envelops the figure in an atmosphere of sacredness and transcendence. The work responds to an iconographic type widely spread in the Crown of Aragon, where the representation of Christ isolated, without narrative elements, is conceived as an image of piety and redemption. In this work we can recognize characteristic features of Francisco de Osona's painting, such as the search for a greater humanization of the face, visible in the serene and close expression of Christ, as well as the careful modeling of the volumes through soft transitions of light and color.

Son of Rodrigo de Osona, from 1485 he worked with his father in the family workshop, sharing a very close way of painting and, in all probability, a common formation. The collaboration between the two is documented in the altarpiece of San Dionisio in the cathedral of Valencia, painted around 1500. While the style of Rodrigo de Osona can be reconstructed from early works, such as the Altarpiece of the Crucifixion in the church of San Nicolás in Valencia, the artistic personality of his son Francisco de Osona, who died before his father, is known thanks to pieces of somewhat later chronology. Among them is the Adoration of the Magi (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), signed around 1505, which shows a greater interest in integrating elements of Renaissance language. In those works made jointly it is difficult to distinguish the intervention of each one, which is why they are usually attributed to both artists, as is the case with the eight panels by the Osona family in the Prado Museum.