Juan de Valdez-Leal
Spanish, 1622-1690

The Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1388-1393 ca.
oil on canvas
61 1/2 x 42 in.

SBMA, Bequest of Suzette Morton Davidson
2002.31



Juan De Valdés-Leal Spanish, born and died in Sevilla, 1622-1690, painter. This self-portrait was executed in 1670.

RESEARCH PAPER

Juan de Valdes Leal (1622-1690) holds an important place in 17th Century Spanish painting. Long overshadowed by his more famous contemporaries, Valdes Leal is becoming better known thanks to the research of historians of Hispanic art such as Elizabeth Trapier du Gue and to a renewed interest in Spanish art of the seventeenth century.

A master painter of the Spanish High Baroque, Valdes Leal’s career coincided with the last two decades of Spain’s Siglo de Oro, or Golden Age (1565-1665). The cultural expansion enjoyed by Spain during these hundred years was unprecedented in her history. It was based on her conquest and exploitation of the Americas and on the power and profits she gained from her dominions in Italy, the Lowlands, and Portugal. Another impetus to the Siglo de Oro came from Catholic Spain’s triumphs over Islam in her victories over the Moors at home and over the Turks at Lepanto. Between 1565 and 1665 Spain became one of the most powerful nations in the world as well as a center of piety and artistic excellence.

The greatest, richest empire on earth, Spain considered herself a leader in the arts, superior to Elizabethan England in literature and to contemporary Italy in art. There was some justification for this self-esteem. The Siglo de Oro was in literature the age of Cervantes (1547-1616), and in painting of El Greco (1548-1614), Zurbaran (1598-1664), Murillo (1617-1682), Velasquez (1599-1660), Ribera (1588-1652), and Valdes Leal.

The cultural efflorescence Spain enjoyed during its Golden Age was strongly conditioned by the religious fervor of the period. As the stronghold of the Counter-Reformation, Spain adhered to the course set by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) for the Church and the Arts. Baroque art, as it later came to be called, was a direct result of the Council’s dictates. Nowhere in the Catholic world was the pietistic, evangelical thrust of the Counter-Reformation more apparent than in Spain of the Siglo de Oro.

In addition to influencing the shape that the arts would take, the administration of the Catholic Church in Spain became a model of efficiency and integrity as the Inquisition sought out and punished heresies. In 1547, the dark confessional box was introduced and in 1614, made obligatory. Indulgence peddlers disappeared and indulgences, for the most part, were given for pious devotions and works of charity rather than for financial contributions. Instead of retreating before the advance of Protestantism or free thought, the Catholic clergy set out to recapture the mind of youth and allegiance of power. The spirit of the Jesuit Order: confident, positive, energetic, and above all, disciplined, became the spirit of the militant church. Nowhere else on the globe had religion such power over the people as it did during Spain’s Golden Age.

The self-conscious morality of the Counter-Reformation created a puritanical age in Spain which profoundly affected the arts. This new morality informs one of the most influential treatises on art, Francisco Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura (1649), which laid down rigid rules regarding the presentation of holy figures. Even minor considerations such as the discreet draping of Cherubim were carefully legislated. Pacheco’s denunciation of the undraped human form was to have serious consequences for Spanish art in general and for Valdes Leal in particular. According to Pacheco, chastity, decorum, and unquestioning faith were the governing principles of art. “The chief end of art” Pacheco wrote, “is to persuade men to piety and to incline them to God.”

Of the many cities that flourished during the Siglo de Oro none surpassed Seville, the major port of entry for the Spanish silver fleets. It was there that Juan Valdes Leal was born in 1622, the same year that another native son, Velasquez, left it for Madrid. The early years of Valdes Leal’s life are sparingly documented. It is known that his father was Portuguese, one Fernando de Nisa, and his mother Spanish, Antonia Leal Valdes, but no explanation is given for his choosing to use his mothers name alone.

In this respect our painter is akin to Picasso who also gave up his father’s name. Perhaps, like Picasso, this could indicate a rift with the father; or it may have been chosen to ensure easier acceptance in Seville where a Portuguese surname was not desirable on account of the far from friendly relations existing between Spain and Portugal at the time. There is also mention, in the documents concerning Valdes Leal, of an otherwise mysterious silversmith step-father, Pedro de Silva.

Although no documentary evidence exists to shed light on Valdes Leal’s early training, it is commonly assumed that he received his early apprenticeship in Seville. He could not have chosen a better place. A vital artistic center, Seville was not only the home of Velasquez but also of Murillo and Zurbaran, as well as of lesser known artists such as Juan de las Roelas and Francisco Herrera the Elder. It was also the port of entry for the paintings Ribera sent back from Spanish Naples. The art of Rubens, so eagerly sought by the Spanish court, was likewise familiar to Seville. It was glorious and challenging place for an artist and Valdes Leal, like so many of his contemporaries, sought both to emulate and challenge these great masters.

In fact throughout his career Valdes Leal was to work in a variety of modes. This has led detractors to decry a seeming inconsistency in his work. There is a definite Rubensian influence apparent in his Assault by the Saracens on the Convent of San Damiano, Assisi (Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Seville). His realistic, tenebrous Saint Andrew (Church of San Francisco, Cordoba) evokes both Ribera and Caravaggio. The clear linear austerity of his Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi and Saint Agnes (Monasterio de los Carmelitas Calzados, Cordoba) recalls Zurbaran, while the gentle sweetness of his Immaculate Conception (National Gallery, London) is inspired by Murillo. Velasquez provided the prototype for the controlled painterly elegance of the Saint Sebastian (Church of the Magdalene, Seville), and the crystal clarity of Netherlandish art informed the detailed accuracy of Valdes Leal’s late vanitas still-lifes. However, this eclectic alternation of modes should not be seen as artistic uncertainty but as necessary steps in attempting to evolve a unique style.

Of direct impact on Valdes Leal’s artistic development was his move to Cordoba in 1642. Compared to sophisticated Seville, Cordoba was artistically provincial. Such a backwater, however, allowed a twenty year old fledgling artist the opportunity to develop a distinctly personal style out of the shadow of the master painters who otherwise influenced his art.

It was in Cordoba that Valdes Leal in 1644 produced his earliest known work, the Saint Andrew for the Church of San Francisco. In this figure one can already see elements which were to become and integral part of his artistic vocabulary: a powerful handling of facial features, hands and feet uncomfortably fitted to an awkwardly articulated body, a compressed torso, and clothing more akin to a study for drapery than to fabric covering a body. Another typical characteristic of Valdes Leal’s style is the composition divided into a dark repoussoir of rocks at the left which is counterbalanced at the right by a space-defining distant landscape bathed in soft light beneath a turbulent sky.

In his series of paintings of the life of Saint Claire executed during this same early period for the Convent of Carmona, another aspect of Valdes Leal’s style becomes evident: his delight in inventing and painting elaborate metal and gold work. A possible reason for this is provided by the art historian Palomino in his Museo Pictorico of 1715-1724. He tells us that Valdes Leal, during his early training, also worked as a polychromer of retablos and rejas (altar pieces and altar rails). He was therefore familiar with the elaborate decorative elements embellishing so much Baroque art.

In his Virgin of the Silversmiths (Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes, Cordoba), Valdes Leal gave free rein to his decorative ingenuity in the elaborate throne being offered to the Queen of Heaven. In all these early works (1644-1656) the artist also developed his personal vocabulary of color, characterized by delicate pastel shades and dulled tones: pale mauves, muted reds, faded yellows, misty silver greys, iridescent jade greens and leaden blues. It was likewise in Cordoba that he developed his technique of painting with a sparsely loaded brush and of using thinned paints, thus allowing one to see clearly the elaborate brushwork.

In 1656 the thirty-four year old artist returned to Seville to find a declining city abandoned by the silver fleets and the population decimated by the terrible plague of 1649.

In 1657-58 (the year that Zurbaran left Seville) Valdes Leal was commissioned to make a retablo for the Monasterio de los Carmelitas Calzados of Seville. Directly related to the Saint Francis in Ecstacy, on loan to the Museum, are the Saint Michael and Saint Rafael from this retablo. Both of these are based on Rafael’s Saint Michael (Paris, Louvre), known to Valdes Leal through Giles Rousselet’s engraving after the original. Raphael’s Saint Michael was considered the paradigm of artistic excellence in 17th Century academies, and it is therefore not surprising that Valdes Leal should have chosen to base his two archangels on this work.

Of interest to the student of Valdes Leal is the fidelity with which the artist has copied the weak and awkward placement of Saint Michael’s left leg in his own figure. This flaw, not found in the original and unique to Rousselet’s print, was not apparent to a painter unschooled in anatomy and unfamiliar with the nude human form.

The Saint Michael and the Saint Raphael also exhibit the delicate beauty and heavy handed awkwardness typical of Valdes Leal. As in the Saint Francis in Ecstasy one observes the active postures and the flutterings of the draperies which serve to distract from the awkward proportions of the figures. These works also manifest elaborately wrought greaves, helmets and jeweled clasps.

In 1660 Valdes Leal was made Diputado or deputy of the newly formed Academy of Drawing in Seville of which Murillo and Herrera the Younger were elected joint presidents. At the high point of his career, he was also made Alcalde de la Pintura of the Guild of Saint Luke. It is during this period (1660-1665) that Valdes Leal produced his moving Crucifixion (1660-61) for the Church of the Magdalene and the Saint Francis Ecstasy.

The Saint Francis must have been designed for a retablo, possibly for the church of San Francisco in Cordoba for which Valdes Leal had previously worked. It is the kind of painting normally employed as an altarpiece for a small devotional chapel. Originally it was placed above the eye level of the worshipper. Many of the distortions apparent in a head-on view therefore are corrected when the painting is seen at the proper angle from below.

Saint Francis was important to the Counter-Reformation as an alternative to the more militant saints of the day: Saint Dominic, Saint Carlo Borromeo, Saint Xavier, and Saint Ignatius Loyola. In return for the privilege of serving the church as a humble friar, Saint Francis had given up all worldly goods and, asking for nothing, had suffered Christ’s agony and received the Stigmata. The treasures of this earth Saint Francis had willingly traded for the gift of eternal salvation.

The intense emotion and deep piety of Valdes Leal’s Saint Francis is informed by the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. He is shown not, as was usual in earlier times, at the moment of receiving the Stigmata, or as the gentle preacher to birds and beasts, but in pious ecstasy as he meditates on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The source of his piety, the New Testament, lies at his feet. Its pages as well as the features of the saint and angels are suffused with an unearthly glow. Draped over the book is the scourge with which he has been flagellating himself in penance for Christ’s agony.

The more immediate object of his devotion is the Crucifix. The saint’s lips brush the knees of the crucified Christ, as if to warm the pitiful figure with his breath. Christ’s pain is made evident in the strained and outstretched arms. Saint Francis’ identification with the suffering of Christ is conveyed by his swooning expression, the tenderness with which his left hand supports the Crucifix, and by the mark of the Stigmata breaking the flesh of his right hand. He is ecstatic in veneration an, in his complete absorption in the agony of Jesus, the saints features assume those of the Christ in Valdes Leal’s Crucifixion.

The saint, a mere mortal man, is supported by two angels, who, as the emissaries of heaven, are both larger than he. The outsize angel at the left, whose size would have been diminished when viewed from below, confronts the viewer, inviting him to contemplate the saint whose back he touches with a graceful, delicate hand. With his severely compelling gaze, this angel is one of the most strikingly beautiful elements in the painting.

The angel at the right, his forehead drawn with concern, swoops forward to catch the swooning saint. The body of this angel, bent at a ninety degree angle, is masked by his cloak. His left leg thrusts forward and serves to lead the eye of the viewer back and up into the picture plane.

The dynamic composition of this painting is “Baroque” in its complexity. A strong diagonal, from lower left to upper right, is created by the figure of the Saint and the supporting angel. This is counterbalanced by the stabilizing vertical of the angel at the left. The picture plane is defined by the still-life created by the rock, the book, and the scourge (which serve as a repoussoir), and by the foot of the angel at the right. Recession is measured by the wings of the angels while the landscape framed by the triangular space between the saint and the supporting angel effects a sudden jump back into depth.

The Saint Francis in Ecstasy is a completely affecting work filled with controlled intensity. An excellent example of Valdes Leal’s painting; it is a superbly Spanish piece and typically High Baroque.

Valdes Leal’s late period (1666-1690) was one of both artistic triumph and decline for the painter. In 1664 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was adopted in Spain, and Seville became the center for the production of official images. As a subject matter, however, the Immaculate Conception was better suited to Murillo’s tender sweetness than to Valdes Leal’s more somber and dramatic talents. His late renditions of this theme are decidedly inferior to his earlier production. Fortunately Valdes Leal found another subject matter better suited to his temperament. He devoted himself to developing the vanitas still-life in a uniquely Spanish manner. These terrifyingly beautiful still-life’s brought his career to a glorious end, and today they are the works by which Valdes Leal is best known. The Saint Francis in Ecstasy, however, serves to remind us of the equally expressive power of his earlier art.

Paper written by Dr. Felipe Cervera, University of California, Santa Barbara in July 1979. Typed for the SBMA Docent website by Erin Zetter November, 2005.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gestos y Perez, Jose. Biografia del Pintor Sevilliano Juan de Valdes Leal, Sevilla, Oficina Tipografica de Juan P. Girones, 1916.

Lopez Martinez, Celestino. Juan de Valdes Leal, Sevilla, Imprenta y Libreria Sobrino de Izquierdo, 1922.

Pacheco, Francisco. Arte de la Pintura, Madrid, Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1956.

Palomino de Castro y Velasco, Acislo Antonio. El Museo Pictorico y Escala Optica, Madrid, M. Agular, 1947.

Trapier, Elizabeth du Gue. Valdes Leal, Baroque Concept of Death & Suffering in His Paintings, New York, Hispanic Society of America, 1956.

…. Valdes Leal, Spanish Baroque Painter, New York, Hispanic Society of America, 1960.