Null Madrid School; second half of the seventeenth century. 

"The Virgin and St…
Description

Madrid School; second half of the seventeenth century. "The Virgin and St. Anthony of Padua". Oil on panel. Presents faults and Repainting. Measurements. 45 x 34 cm; 54 x 43 cm (frame). In an austere cell a great break of glory is developed, arranged in the superior zone of the composition. In the inferior zone, in a completely earthly plane, the figure of a kneeling saint is located, dressed with a gray habit and raising his look and his open hands towards the sky, where the Virgin is. Both the theatricality with which the composition of the scene is conceived, as well as the vaporous digging of tones that tend to luminous finishes, indicate that this is a work typical of the Madrid Baroque school. A school that stands out for its opulence to a great extent enhanced by the court. Saint Anthony of Padua is, after Saint Francis of Assisi, the most popular of the Franciscan saints. He was born in Lisbon in 1195 and only spent the last two years of his life in Padua. After studying at the convent of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, in 1220 he entered the Order of Friars Minor, where he changed his first name, Fernando, to Antonio. After teaching theology in Bologna, he traveled through southern and central France, preaching in Arles, Montpellier, Puy, Limoges and Bourges. In 1227 he participated in the general chapter of Assisi. In 1230 he was in charge of the transfer of the remains of St. Francis. He preached in Padua and died there at the age of 36 in 1231. He was canonized only a year after his death, in 1232. Until the end of the 15th century, the cult of St. Anthony remained located in Padua. From the following century he became, at first, the national saint of the Portuguese, who put under his patronage the churches they built abroad, and then a universal saint. He is represented as a beardless young man with a large monastic tonsure, dressed in the brown habit of the Franciscans. One of his most frequent attributes is the book, which identifies him as a sacred writer. Another distinctive iconographic feature is the branch of lily, an element taken from his panegyrist Bernardino de Siena. St. Anthony is usually presented with the Child Jesus, in allusion to an apparition he had in his cell. It became the most popular attribute of this saint from the 16th century onwards, being especially popular in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation.

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Madrid School; second half of the seventeenth century. "The Virgin and St. Anthony of Padua". Oil on panel. Presents faults and Repainting. Measurements. 45 x 34 cm; 54 x 43 cm (frame). In an austere cell a great break of glory is developed, arranged in the superior zone of the composition. In the inferior zone, in a completely earthly plane, the figure of a kneeling saint is located, dressed with a gray habit and raising his look and his open hands towards the sky, where the Virgin is. Both the theatricality with which the composition of the scene is conceived, as well as the vaporous digging of tones that tend to luminous finishes, indicate that this is a work typical of the Madrid Baroque school. A school that stands out for its opulence to a great extent enhanced by the court. Saint Anthony of Padua is, after Saint Francis of Assisi, the most popular of the Franciscan saints. He was born in Lisbon in 1195 and only spent the last two years of his life in Padua. After studying at the convent of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, in 1220 he entered the Order of Friars Minor, where he changed his first name, Fernando, to Antonio. After teaching theology in Bologna, he traveled through southern and central France, preaching in Arles, Montpellier, Puy, Limoges and Bourges. In 1227 he participated in the general chapter of Assisi. In 1230 he was in charge of the transfer of the remains of St. Francis. He preached in Padua and died there at the age of 36 in 1231. He was canonized only a year after his death, in 1232. Until the end of the 15th century, the cult of St. Anthony remained located in Padua. From the following century he became, at first, the national saint of the Portuguese, who put under his patronage the churches they built abroad, and then a universal saint. He is represented as a beardless young man with a large monastic tonsure, dressed in the brown habit of the Franciscans. One of his most frequent attributes is the book, which identifies him as a sacred writer. Another distinctive iconographic feature is the branch of lily, an element taken from his panegyrist Bernardino de Siena. St. Anthony is usually presented with the Child Jesus, in allusion to an apparition he had in his cell. It became the most popular attribute of this saint from the 16th century onwards, being especially popular in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation.

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Showcase; Madrid, second half of the seventeenth century. Ebonized ribera wood with bone applications. Presents faults. Measurements: 105 x 74 x 38,5 cm. Showcase in ebonized riparian wood, with decorative details of marquetry and bone appliques. The structure, of architectural inspiration, is rectangular, with carved cornices at the base that rest on four legs. The upper body is topped with an openwork gallery as a balustrade. The Madrid school arose around the court of Philip IV first and then Charles II, and developed throughout the seventeenth century. Analysts of this school have insisted on considering its development as a result of the agglutinating power of the court; what is truly decisive is not the place of birth of the different artists, but the fact that they were educated and worked around and for a nobiliary and religious clientele located next to the royalty. This allows and favors a stylistic unity, although the logical divergences due to the personality of the members can be appreciated. In its origin, the Madrid school is linked to the rise to the throne of Philip IV, a monarch who made Madrid, for the first time, an artistic center. This meant an awakening of the nationalist conscience by allowing a liberation from the previous Italianizing molds to jump from the last echoes of Mannerism to Tenebrism. This will be the first step of the school, which in a gradual sense will walk successively until the achievement of a more autochthonous baroque language and linked to the political, religious and cultural conceptions of the monarchy of the Austrias, to go to die with the first outbreaks of rococo that are manifested in the production of the last of its representatives.