Vanitas, Seville school of the 17th century, attributable to Juan Valdés Leal (Seville, 1622-1690)

Vanitas, Seville school of the 17th century, attributable to Juan Valdés Leal (Seville, 1622-1690)
Oil on canvas, framed. With the poem "Life is a dream" by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. We find ourselves before an interesting composition in the "vanitas" theme, very extended by most of Europe during the XV to XVIII centuries, the allegories "finis gloriae mundi "(The end of worldly glories) and "in ictu oculi" (In the blink of an eye) illustrate the thought of Miguel de Mañara, renovator of the Brotherhood of Holy Charity, as he wrote in his Book of Truth , in addition to completing the iconographic program of the chapel, made up of the Holy Burial of the main altarpiece and the series of "works of mercy" painted by Murillo, with which they form a coherent whole. However, the macabre of his subject - and the strong personality of the painter - were detrimental to his posthumous fame and made it easy for him to end up being attributed any painting in which a decomposing corpse or the severed head of a saint appeared, even if it were It was about paintings of the lowest quality. Become a «painter of the dead», as Enrique Romero de Torres called him, All lugubrious and repulsive affairs seemed to suit him, while with romantic overtones the rivalry with Murillo, his contemporary, was enlarged and deepened, since Valdés was assumed to have an angry and arrogant temperament opposed to the peaceful character of his rival. Measurements: 108 x 69