Joan Macip, called Joan de Joanes

Eden Papers, 8th February 1884, n.p.: ‘The Holy Family. Juan Juanes’;

Pictures that are Heirlooms, MS list, n.d.: ‘'Holy Family' by Juan Juanes 1523–1579/ (Founder of Valencian School)’;

Pictures at Windlestone, MS list, 1909, as hanging in the East Hall, no. 3: ‘Juan Juanes’;

Catalogue of the Pictures at Windlestone, MS list, n.d., no. 3: ‘Juan Juanes (1523–1579)/ Holy Family/Founder of Valencian School’;

Manuscript notebook, before 1922, as hanging in the East Hall, no. 3 (crossed out and renumbered ‘11’): ‘Holy Family by Juan de Juanes (1523–1579)/ Founder of Valencian School’.

Vicente Joanes, better known as Joan de Joanes was the son of Vicente Maçip, one of the most significant and long-lived artists in Valencia in the first half of the sixteenth century, and together with him influenced the art of that city and Spain itself for many years afterwards. His career coincided with the period during which Valencia was becoming the principal centre in Spain for the reception of the new artistic ideas of the High Renaissance arriving from Central and Northern Italy, and serves as a fascinating reflection of the great changes that the city’s pictorial traditions were then undergoing. Despite being strongly influenced by his father, with whom he worked on many of the most important projects in Valencia in the mid-century, Juan de Juanes developed his own distinctive style, less detailed in its finish but marked by a gentler spirit and its clearer and lighter tonality.

In this panel we see the Holy Family, together with the infant Saint John the Baptist and Saint Mary Magdalene kneeling in prayer before an apple tree, in whose branches are displayed the instruments of Christ’s future Passion: The Cross and nails, with the lance with which His side was pierced as well as the spear with the sponge soaked in vinegar used by the Roman soldiers to taunt His thirst. On another branch hangs the scourge, symbol of Christ’s Flagellation at the hands of the Romans. Mary Magdalene, identified here by her traditional symbol of a jar of ointment, also holds in her hands the Crown of Thorns. The infant Christ steps upon a skull, an action symbolic of His victory over Death, and clasps a branch of the apple tree, symbolic of the Fall of Man, and by this action signifying His future role of Redeemer and the everlasting life promised by His suffering and Resurrection. The iconography is somewhat unusual, and no doubt a reflection of the highly spiritual nature of works of art prescribed by the Counter Reformation which found such a ready response in the highly devout nature of Spanish sixteenth-century society. Juan de Juanes was himself a particularly devout Christian, and is said to not to have worked on a painting until he had taken Holy Communion. No other versions of this subject by him are recorded, but another devotional panel depicting The Holy Family with the infant Saint John and angels holding instruments of the Passion is preserved in the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid.

This painting was one of a group of Spanish Renaissance and Baroque pictures acquired in Valencia in Spain around 1830-31 by Sir William Eden, 6th Baronet of West Auckland (1803-1873), for his new neoclassical mansion Windlestone Hall in County Durham. The Holy Family is recorded in Sir William’s own manuscript of the Hanging plan of the collection at Windlestone in the nineteenth-century as hanging on the south side of the West Hall.

The collection at Windlestone was particularly notable for its pioneering collection of Spanish paintings, still a rarity at this date, and indeed was formed at much the same time as that of John Bowes (1811-1885) at Barnard Castle in the same county, which also contained a number of Spanish works; and a little earlier than that of Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Bt. (1818-1878), author of the Annals of the Artists of Spain (1847), at Keir House in Scotland.

Other works acquired by Sir William included, for example, no less than four paintings by or attributed to Murillo (1617-1682), including two large canvases of The Virgin and Child, a still-life of flowers by Juan de Arellano (Sotheby’s, London, 8 July 2021, lot 145), and two paintings of the Last Judgement and A portrait of a lady by or attributed to the very rare Baroque painter Francisco Ribalta (1565-1628), which are similarly recorded hanging on the North wall of the picture Gallery and elsewhere at Windlestone.¹

¹ For a near-contemporary description of the gallery and some of the collection see: ‘The Private Collections of England, Windlestone Hall’, The Athenaeum, no. 2599, 18 August 1877, pp. 215–17. See also N. Glendinning and H. Macartney (eds.), Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland 1750-1920, London 1911, p. 49.