Saint Rodrigo (Murillo)

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Saint Rodrigo (Bartolomé Esteban Murillo)
Saint Rodrigo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo , 1650/55
Oil on canvas
205 × 123 cm
Old Masters Picture Gallery

Saint Rodrigo is a painting by the Spanish baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo , which he made around 1650/55. The painting, executed in oil on canvas, is 205 × 123 centimeters in size. It has been in the collection of the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden since 1853.

Image description

The painting shows Saint Rodrigo as a full figure. He was a priest in 857 Córdoba his martyrdom had experienced. He wears the chasuble and is distinguished as a martyr by his neck wound and palm branch. The priest's regalia corresponds to the shape customary at the time the painting was created. In his left hand he holds his biretta , on the left arm he wears the maniple . The chasuble has a wide chasuble stick. On this the blessing Christ and the apostles Paul and Andrew are shown in embroidery. These correspond in their details to representations from the 16th century. There is a balustrade behind the saint . From a gap in the cloud in the upper left corner of the picture, a putto reaches down a flower crown to the saint.

Background and origin

The title of the painting has not always been clearly assigned to Saint Rodrigo. There is a French inscription on the stretcher that identifies the saint as St. Etienne . However, correct identification has been made in the catalog of Galerie espagnole. Probably due to the French name spelling Rodrigue 's name at Hübner in 1856 to was Rodriguez . This error persisted in the Dresden inventory catalogs for around 150 years and was taken up by other researchers such as Charles B. Curtis or José Camón Aznar .

Saint Rodrigo shows a clear similarity to Murillo's death of Saint Clare from the 1640s in the application of paint, modeling and attention to detail , while the architecture in the picture corresponds to that in the Dresden Madonna , which was created a decade later. The canvas used is not woven in the usual plain weave, but in the body weave. This was a common technique on Murillo's canvases and on larger format canvases in Seville in general. The painting was one in a restoration doubling . Nevertheless, the impasto application of paint has been retained.

Richard Ford claimed in 1853 that the model for the chasuble portrayed by Murillo had survived in Seville Cathedral. This was subsequently taken up repeatedly in various inventory catalogs of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. In fact, there is a chasuble made of red velvet in Seville , which is similar to the one shown in terms of cut, size of the chasuble stick and distribution of the ornaments. The differences predominate, however: the color of the ornaments is different and they are designed much more simply. Like the one shown in the picture, the chasuble has images of the apostles Paul and Andrew, but these are shown indoors. There are no clear parallels in the depiction of the apostles either. In addition, the medallion with the blessing Salvator is missing . It is therefore more likely that Murillo was generally based on the chasuble preserved in Seville or at least a similar one.

In the literature on Murillo's paintings, the possibility of a portrait in the representation of the face of the saint is considered. This thesis was represented by, among others, Carl Justi , Diego Angulo Iñiguez and on the occasion of the Madrid exhibition in 1982 and 1983. Although there was a minor benefactor named Rodrigo in Seville Cathedral at the time the painting was created , it was not an unusual name at the time, which is why an identification cannot be assumed with certainty.

Provenance

The earliest established evidence of the painting's provenance assigns it to the collection of Canon Francisco Pereira in Seville , which consisted of around 200 Spanish and Italian paintings. The auction catalog of Christie's in London from 1853 also indicates its origin in the Santa Clara monastery in Seville. However, this information could not be verified with other sources. The monastery was known as the place of origin of other Murillos, but a representation of Rodrigo by Murillo can be found in the inventories made before the French occupation. There is also no evidence of its origin from Seville Cathedral , which was once traded as the place of origin in the 19th century. In 1836 the Baron Isidore Taylor acquired Saint Rodrigo von Murillo along with nine other paintings from the Pereira collection. Between 1838 and 1848 the painting was in the gallery espagnole of the Musée Royal of the French king Louis-Philippe I in Paris . There it was one of the 30 paintings attributed to Murillo. Together with the other paintings in this Spanish gallery, Saint Rodrigo was auctioned off at Christie's in London in 1853. There it acquired Ludwig Gruner for 210 pounds - a relatively high price - for the Picture Gallery in Dresden. It was the majority of the amount available for purchases at this auction. In Dresden, Saint Rodrigo has been valued more than other Spanish works since that time. Between 1945 and 1955 the painting was looted in the Soviet Union .

literature

  • Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7913-5179-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7913-5179-7 , p. 78.
  2. a b c d e f Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 79.
  3. ^ Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 78f.
  4. ^ A b c Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 76.
  5. ^ Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 80.