LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, 1510/1520 – 1586) “The Virgin of the

LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, 1510/1520 – 1586) “The Virgin of the

LUIS DE MORALES
(Badajoz, 1510/1520 – 1586)
“The Virgin of the Yard-winder”
Oil on panel
71 x 50.3cm
Provenance:
Parish Church and Parsonage of Irasondo, Navarre.The present item is catalogued in the
inventory of Valuable Items of this church, performed on 25 September 1746, in which
it states specifically: “It otro de Ntra. Sra. De la Contemplación”.
Yarza collection, Zaragoza
Related Literature:
D. ANGULO IÑIGUEZ, Ars Hispaniae, vol.XII, Madrid, 1954, pp.239-240.
I. BÄCKSBACKA, Luis de Morales. Helsinki, 1961.
J. CAMON AZNAR, Summa Artis, vol.XXIV, Madrid, 1970, pp.470-481.
E. DU GUÉ TRAPIER, Luis de Morales and the Leonardesque influences in Spain,
New York, 1953.
EXHIBITION, Los Hernándos, pintores hispanos del entorno de Leonardo. Catalogue
by F. Benito Domenech, J. Gómez and V. Samper. Valencia, 1998.
J. ORTIZ DE TARANCO, “Las tablas de devoción privada de Yáñez y su escuela”, in
Estudios sobre literatura y arte dedicados al Profesor Emilio Orozco Díaz, Granada,
1975, vol. II, pp.97-95.
J.A. GAYA NUÑO, Luis de Morales, Madrid, 1961.
I. MATEO GÓMEZ, “Flandes, Portugal y Toledo en la obra de Luis de Morales: Las
Vírgenes gitanas”, Archivo Español de Arte, vol., LXXX, no. 317, 2007, pp. 7-24.
R. CH. POST, A History of Spanish Painting. Cambridge, Mass. Vol. XI, 1959.
A. RODRIGUEZ GUTIERREZ DE CEBALLOS, “El mundo espiritual del pintor Luis
de Morales”, Goya, 1987, pp.194-203.
J.Mª RUIZ MANERO, La pintura italiana del siglo XVI en España. Tomo I: Leonardo
y los leonardescos, Madrid, Fundación Universitaria, Española, 1952.
C. SOLIS, Luis de Morales, Badajoz, 2002.
The Virgin is shown seated with the naked Infant Christ in her lap, sitting on her right
leg. In one hand he holds a yard-winder topped by a cross that he contemplates with a
sad, melancholy expression similar to his mother’s as both experience a presentiment of
his future Passion. In his other hand the Christ Child holds the bobbin of the spindle.
The Virgin’s right hand protectively enfolds him while her foreshortened left hand
projects forward in the pictorial space towards the viewer. Crowning her beautiful face,
her reddish hair is covered by a thin veil of a delicacy comparable to her eyebrows,
lashes and teeth, the latter just visible in her half-open mouth with its expression of
grief. She wears a pinkish-mauve tunic with gathered sleeves that reveals the edge of
her under-shirt at the neck. Over her tunic is a metallic blue mantle with broad folds. As
in many of Morales’s compositions, the background is dark and the figures are
modelled through light and shade in a manner that recalls Leonardo’s chiaroscuro.
Morales’s composition of The Virgin of the Yard-winder derives from a lost work by
Leonardo, painted in 1501 for Florimond Robertet, Secretary to François I of France
and known from a description by Pietro della Novella in a letter to Isabella d’Este.
Numerous contemporary copies were made of it in Italy, notably the one in the
collection of the Duke of Buccleuch (fig. 1), which some specialists attribute to
Leonardo himself. That version was stolen from Drumlaring Castle in Scotland in 2003.
Another version considered to be by Leonardo and his studio is in a private collection in
New York.
Fig.1
There are copies of this work by the Hernándos, Valencian painters in Leonardo’s
studio who must have had first-hand knowledge of it in Florence. It seems likely that
Morales would have encountered the composition in Valencia through those artists as
he went there when his patron, Juan de Ribera, Bishop of Badajoz, was appointed
Archbishop of Valencia. There is a very similar composition by Yáñez de Almedina in
the Museo de Bellas artes de Murcia, on deposit from the Museo del Prado (fig. 2). Also
attributed to the Hernándos is a high quality version in a private collection in San
Sebastian. Similar to these versions but with the additional presence of Saint Joseph, is
a work by Yáñéz in the Grether collection in Buenos Aires, although in this case the
Fig.2
Christ Child holds a small bird rather than a yard-winder. Finally, mention should be
made of a drawing in the Uffizi in Florence, which is undoubtedly a preparatory study
for one of the above-mentioned Valencian versions.
Bearing in mind all the above, the success of Leonardo’s composition in Spain is
evident, firstly with the Hernándos in Valencia and subsequently with Morales. As his
other works also reveal, Morales was primarily interested in Leonardo for his technique
of sfumato (a subject analysed by E. Du Gué Trapier), undoubtedly via the works of the
Valencian painters.
What is most striking in Morales’s reinterpretation of this subject is his decision to omit
the landscape and colouring of the Italian and Valencian versions (with the exception of
the one by Yáñez in Buenos Aires) in order to focus the viewer’s attention on the
figures, a device also found in some compositions by Sebastiano del Piombo. He thus
sets them against a dark background, which, combined with the strong chiaroscuro of
the figures, achieves a Mannerist drama that reflects literary mysticism of this period,
also evident in his Ecce Homo compositions.
Attention has been drawn to Morales’s dependence on Early Netherlandish painting and
to Portuguese and Toledan painting, particularly the late work of Juan Correa de Vivar.
This list should be extended with the inclusion of the Valencian painters discussed
above. This interrelationship between various schools led Gaya Nuño to define
Morales’s style as that of an artist of “borrowed modes” who assimilated other artists
work in a curiously “innocent, naked” manner. Morales placed his skills in the service
of a type of religious painting of an intimate spirituality that was in demand by the
society of his time and which ultimately looked back to the iconography of the Early
Netherlandish painters, albeit characterised by a different, Trentine, expressivity.
Relevant comparisons could include Gossaert’s Virgin and Child or any anonymous
work of that school.
What might be termed the concept of the “concealed Passion” that underlies the present
work recurs in numerous works by Morales, who was undoubtedly responding to the
demands of a client base comprising religious houses, private clients of different social
classes and the Church. They included his patron Juan de Ribera, who was later
canonised.
Within Morales’s versions of The Virgin of the Yard-winder the motif that undergoes
changes is the position of the Christ Child with regard to the way he moves towards the
yard-winder and his pose on the Virgin’s lap or legs. The versions closest to the present
one, in which he is shown seated upright on the Virgin looking at the cross on the yardwinder, are in Berlin (fig. 3), in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (fig. 4)
and in the Royal Palace in Madrid. None, however, reveal the quality of the present
work in the exquisite definition of the Virgin’s long fingers with their pronounced nails
and subtly defined knuckles, her beautiful face filled with terrible yet restrained grief,
the quality of the depiction of the clothes that complement the harmonious form of the
Christ Child, his head tilted to one side and his blue eyes observing the cross-piece of
the yard-winder as a portent of his death on the cross. Within Morales’s oeuvre the
Christ’s Child eyes in this panel are only comparable to those in Christ tied to the
Column from the same Madrid collection.
When discussing Morales’s Virgin and Child compositions, Camón Aznar noted that
their “spiritual intent” allows them to be associated with El Greco and that the holy
sweetness of the faces is of Italian origin while their sense of suffering mysticism is
Spanish.
The present Virgin of the Yard-winder from a private Madrid collection is an excellent
version of this subject by the artist. It can be considered an important addition to
Morales’s interpretations of this theme and to his oeuvre as a whole.
Fig.3
Fig.4
Dr. Isabel Mateo. Doctor in Art History