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work of the month: Current

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What do you see?

Against the theatrical backdrop of an Italianate interior, Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan monk dressed in dark robes and baring his head according to the dictates of his order, falls to his knees in humility. Above him, the nude Christ Child – his weight balanced between a glistening globe and the head of an angel – reaches toward Anthony in a sign of blessing. The globe and Christ Child are supported by a host of cherubim.

Anthony kneels before an altar draped in a plush red cloth. In the foreground, beside the altar, a metal urn holds a branch of white lilies, the traditional symbol of purity, chastity, and innocence. On the other side of the altar, two putti (“little angels”) converse in the shadows, one of whom holds a brown book while the other gestures towards the scene taking place in front of them. Meanwhile, two putti carrying a garland of pink roses (signifying grace and gentility) fly behind Anthony.

The artist, Claudio Coello, signed the painting in the lower left-hand corner (CLAUDIO FA 63). The signature is similar to that on Coello’s earliest signed painting, Christ at the Door of the Temple (1660, Prado Museum, Madrid). In both, the letters and date appear to be “carved” into stone – here, on the platform on which the altar rests.

Not only was this depiction of St. Anthony of Padua the first in Coello’s oeuvre (he eventually executed at least three representations of the saint), but it is also one of the artist’s earliest known works. It has been speculated that The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua may have originally been set into a frame with an arched upper portion.

Who was St. Anthony of Padua?

St. Anthony was born to a noble family in Lisbon in 1195. Although he was baptized with the name “Ferdinand,” he was known as Anthony (“inestimable”) and evangelized primarily in Italy. According to legend, Anthony was such a gifted speaker that he attracted large crowds and spoke many languages; one account suggests that even fish loved to listen to his eloquent sermons. Anthony fought against heresy with such zeal that his many religious conversions earned him the title malleus hereticorum (“hammer of the heretics”). He died in 1231 at the age of 36 and was canonized the following year by Pope Gregory IX. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1946.

Anthony was a favorite saint for Spanish artists, who often painted his likeness. Many images show an episode in which the Christ Child miraculously appeared to Anthony while he was preaching on the subject of the Incarnation. In the original story, the Christ Child takes Anthony’s bible and stands upon it; here, however, Coello places the Christ Child on a globe, while in the shadowed background two conversing putti hold a book, presumably St. Anthony’s bible.

Who was the artist, and what is the style of this work?

Claudio Coello (1642-1693), known primarily for his prolific fresco decorations and easel paintings for the churches of Madrid, was the fourth child of Portuguese parents who emigrated to Spain. His father, Faustino, was a craftsman working in bronze who wished to have his son assist his work. Accordingly, he apprenticed young Claudio to the studio of Francisco Rizi, a court painter and theatrical designer, in about 1654-1655 to study drawing. Rizi recognized Claudio’s talent and convinced the elder Coello to allow Claudio to become a full apprentice.

Like other young artists of his generation, Coello studied great art of the past in the royal collections. As court painter, Rizi allowed his pupil access to the king’s galleries. While some scholars postulate that Coello also studied in Italy, most now believe that he never traveled abroad. Coello’s first dated work is Christ at the Door of the Temple from 1660 (see above). Six years later, at the age of 24, he was given his first large-scale commission.

Coello’s first royal commission – to design triumphal arches for the entry of Queen Marie-Louise d’Orléans (1662-1689) into Madrid – granted him favor at court, where he was named Pintor del Rey in 1683 and the more prestigious Pintor de Cámera three years later. A prolific artist, Coello painted mainly for royal and court patrons, as well as churches and convents in Madrid, the surrounding areas, and also remoter sites: frescoes for Saragossa and canvases for Corella (Navarre) and Salamanca. After an accomplished – if abbreviated – career, Coello died in Madrid on April 20, 1693 and was buried in the Church of San Andrés.

Coello’s late Baroque style is known for its successful conveyance of emotional excitement, dignified elegance, and light, vivid, almost pastel colors. The international elements of Coello’s painting may be accounted for by his contact with Italian painters in Madrid, his collaboration with Spanish artists who had spent long years of study in Italy (including José Jiménez Donoso and Sebastián Muñoz), and his early study of Italian and Flemish works in the royal Spanish collections.

When and for whom was this work made, and how did it come to the Chrysler?

When this painting was made in 1663, Spain was in the last stages of what has been termed its Golden Age. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain’s land holdings around the world were so vast that it was said that the sun never set on Spain. Besides great military and economic power – fueled by the Armada, conquistadors, and riches flowing to the motherland from the New World – the arts and letters flourished in Spain. It was during this period that leading authors (Miguel de Cervantes), dramatists (Félix Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón), mystics (St. Teresa of Avila), poets (Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo), and artists (El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco Zurbarán, Diego Velázquez, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo) produced works unrivalled in their beauty and lasting importance.

When he died in 1665, King Philip IV left a Spain visibly in decline to his four-year-old son and heir, Charles II. It was a dispirited and war-torn country, in which economic extremes lived side by side. Even though the heartland of Castile was in the midst of a long recession, a rich and powerful elite concurrently flourished, made up of the floundering Hapsburg monarchy, a heavy-handed church, a privileged bureaucracy, and a well-established aristocracy. The arts paradoxically prospered in this age of political and economic decline, since the Crown, nobles, clerics, officials, and the haute bourgeoisie possessed the financial resources to indulge in conspicuous consumption.

While each of these four groups patronized the arts during the latter half of the 17th century, the commission for this particular work remains a mystery. Although its earliest known provenance is in the Spanish royal collections, it is widely accepted that Coello’s first royal commission came in 1680: Queen Marie-Louise’s triumphal arches. If this assertion is true, the present work could not have been a royal commission.

Much later, in 1835, the Spanish government disbanded all of its religious orders. In a short time, most monasteries and convents were deserted, and since Spanish art enjoyed a new vogue in the 19th century, many of these artistic treasures were sold to private interests. Baron Isidore Taylor acquired many of these works for Louis-Philippe, King of the French, for his Galerie Espagnole (“Spanish Gallery”) at the Louvre in Paris.

At the same time as he was buying works from the religious orders, Baron Taylor probably acquired this one from Spain’s royal collections. When it hung in the Galerie Espagnole, this painting was erroneously called the Vision of St. Francis. It was the only work by Claudio Coello in the Galerie.

When the Galerie was disbanded after Louis-Philippe’s deposition in 1848, The Vision of St. Anthony of Padua was one of 51 lots acquired at auction in London from May 6 – 21, 1853. It was eventually bought by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. along with another work from the Galerie, Francisco Zurbarán’s Saint Francis in Meditation (no longer in the Museum’s collection). Coello’s work now stands as a testament to the virtuosity and energy of Spanish painting at the end of its Golden Age.

—Kristi McMillan

Sources

Baticle, Jeannine and Cristina Marinas. La Galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre 1838-1848. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1981.

Brown, Jonathan. Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Dal-Gal, Nicolaus. “St. Anthony of Padua.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1. Online ed., 2003.

The Golden Age of Spanish Painting, ex. cat. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1976.

Sullivan, Edward J. Baroque Painting in Madrid: The Contribution of Claudio Coello. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986.

Sullivan, Edward J. and Nina A. Mallory. Painting in Spain 1650-1700 from North American Collections. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1982.