Juan de Valdés Leal

Sale, London, Christie's South Kensington, 25 April 2007, part of lot 327 (as Circle of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo),
where purchased by the present owner

This study of Christ carrying the Cross, executed in pen and ink and wash, is most certainly a fragment from a larger sheet.  Juan de Valdés Leal depicts Christ bearing the cross in his painting, The Apparition of Christ to Saint Ignatius on the Road to Rome, now in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville.¹  The painting formed part of a pictorial cycle dedicated to Saint Ignatius of Loyola for the courtyard of Seville's principal Jesuit church, now the parish church of the Anunciacion.  A black and red chalk preparatory drawing for the painting, illustrating the full composition, is in the Meadows Museum, Dallas.² 

The attribution to Juan de Valdés Leal has been suggested by Dr. Zahira Véliz, former curator of the Apelles Collection.  It is difficult to ascertain whether the present drawing is connected with the aforementioned commission, but one could surmise that many other studies and drawings would likely have been executed in preparation for such an important commission and this fragment may indeed connect in some way to this project.  Valdés Leal's painting, Camino del Calvario, in the Prado, Madrid, also depicts Christ carrying the Cross, but there appears to be a stronger correlation between the stance of Christ in the present sheet and the figure of Christ in the painting in Seville.

1. Valdés Leal, exhib. cat., Madrid, Museo del Prado; Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, 1991, no. 49

2. Fecit VI Spanish Old Master Drawings, exhib. cat., Madrid, Galleria José de la Mano, no. 10 (no date)