Workshop of Josè Leonardo (Zaragoza, 1601 – 1653), Birth of the Virgin

Workshop of Josè Leonardo (Zaragoza, 1601 – 1653)

Birth of the Virgin

Oil on canvas, 69 x 86 cm – with frame, 87,5 x 104 cm

A lively domestic interior hosts the scene of the Birth of the Virgin, populated by numerous female figures intent on assisting Anna in the moments following the birth. On the right, the bed with red curtains accommodates the mother in labor reclining against the pillows, while in the foreground a group of women care for the newborn baby Mary: some hold her in swaddling clothes, some prepare bath towels, some hand out linens. On the left, an elderly figure warms clothes by the fire, a detail of everyday life that anchors the sacred tale in real life. Above, among golden clouds, a group of winged cherubs introduces the celestial dimension of the episode. The composition closely recalls that of the autograph painting by Jusepe Leonardo, now in the Prado Museum, dated to the early 1640s and considered one of the pinnacles of his production: there too, we find the same arrangement of figures around the bed, the same crowd of women surrounding the newborn, and that attention to naturalistic detail that makes the sacred scene extraordinarily close to everyday life. It should also be remembered that two further versions of the subject have been attributed to the artist, one of small dimensions from the collection of the Marquis of La Almunia, probably a preparatory sketch, the other preserved in the Monastery of El Escorial, the latter with a more disputed attribution and also linked to Valdés Leal.

To understand the milieu of Jusepe Leonardo's Madrid workshop, it is useful to compare this work with The Metal Serpent, now held at the Académie de San Fernando in Madrid. Here, one finds the same ability to orchestrate crowded compositions with figures with broad, theatrical gestures, and the attention to the figures' heads that betrays a knowledge of Velázquez's teachings. The most significant compositional source for the subject of the Birth of the Virgin, however, remains Tintoretto's famous canvas, executed around 1590 and now held at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Its scenic layout, with the diagonally arranged bed and the swarm of female figures in the foreground, seems to have provided a direct model for this composition. Furthermore, the possible role of Cornelis Cort's prints on the same theme, which served as a vehicle for the dissemination of Venetian iconography in the Iberian Peninsula, should not be overlooked.

Born in Calatayud in 1601, Jusepe Leonardo moved to Madrid at a young age, where he studied under Pedro de las Cuevas, in whose house he lived between 1616 and 1621. His involvement in the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace, beginning in 1635, brought him into direct contact with the court and the painting of Velázquez, an experience that further refined his already refined chromatic sensibility. Spanish painting of the mid-seventeenth century, of which Josè Leonardo was a protagonist, was nourished precisely by this dialogue between the Venetian tradition, mediated by Titian and Tintoretto, and the Dutch influences spread through imported prints and paintings, blending them into a naturalistic yet spectacular language, capable of conveying with free and loose brushstrokes both the solemnity of the sacred narrative and the concreteness of domestic affections.

The object is in good condition

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