Workshop of LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, 1509 - Alcántara, 1586)."Ecce Homo", ca.1570.Oil on panel.

Workshop of LUIS DE MORALES (Badajoz, 1509 - Alcántara, 1586).
"Ecce Homo", ca.1570.
Oil on panel.
Andalusian frame from the 18th century.
It shows damage to the polychromy, losses and restorations.
Provenance: Private Collection Barcelona s.XX; Lacalle de Castro Collection, pps. s.XX.
Measurements: 75 x 57 cm; 66 x 48 cm (frame).
This devotional panel is a direct descendant of the paintings of the same subject by Luis de Morales. Due to the proximity in theme and treatment, it is considered an artist from the workshop of the Flemish-Andalusian master. With his meticulous execution and tenebrist light, he conveys the Passionary moment with his masterly handling of chiaroscuro, having learned from Morales (see the Ecce Homos in the Museo del Prado and the Staatliche Kunstsammlunguen Museum in Dresden). The figure is cut half-length against a black background, emphasising his gaunt anatomy and gaunt skin, his bowed head and sorrowful eyes. With one long-fingered hand he holds the cane like a sceptre. He communicates an intense, emotionally charged pathos, conveying a mystical experience. The theme of the Passion of Christ is one of the most significant aspects of Luis de Morales's iconography. The Ecce Homo and its variant as the Man of Sorrows, in Morales's works, were very popular in his day, and several versions of these themes were produced.
The Ecce Homo theme precedes the Crucifixion episode. The words "Ecce Homo" are those pronounced by Pilate when presenting Christ to the crowd; their translation is "behold the man", a phrase by which he mocks Jesus and implies that Christ's power was not such in comparison with that of the leaders who were judging him.
Luis de Morales is considered one of the Spanish painters of the second half of the 16th century. His training poses serious problems, although Palomino describes him as a pupil of the Flemish painter who lived in Seville between 1537 and 1563. His use of colouring and sfumato is related to the Lombard tradition of Bernardino Luini and Cristoforo Solario, whom he probably met not on a trip to Italy but possibly to Valencia, in order to keep abreast of the innovations of the Leonardo painters Fernando Yáñez and Fernando de Llanos and the Raphaelesque painters Vicente and Juan Masip. However, the most personal aspect of his painting lies in the tormented, almost hysterical atmosphere in which his figures breathe, more focused on an intense inner life than on action, full of melancholy and ascetic renunciation and characteristic of the climate of tense religiosity imposed in 16th-century Spain by the reform movements, from the less orthodox Erasmianism and Alumbradism to the more genuine mysticism and Trentism. Morales, called the Divine by his first biographer, Antonio Palomino, because he painted only religious subjects with great delicacy and subtlety, reached his peak from 1550 to 1570, when he painted numerous altarpieces, He painted numerous altarpieces, triptychs and isolated canvases that were widely distributed because they satisfied the popular religiosity of the time, although some of his canvases contain quotations and information of literary erudition, the result of his contact with enlightened clients, primarily the bishops of the diocese of Badajoz, in whose service he worked. On the other hand, his presence in the monastery of El Escorial, called by Philip II, is not documented, although it seems that the latter acquired some of his works to give them as gifts. The enormous production and the continuous demand for his most frequent and popular iconographic themes obliged him to maintain a large workshop in which his two sons, Cristóbal and Jerónimo, collaborated; a workshop responsible for many copies that circulate and are still considered to be Morales's autograph works.