Jubilee at the Portiuncula
Jubilee of the Porziuncola, 1667
Oil on canvas. 430 x 295 cm. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne.
The Jubilee of the Porziuncola, besides perhaps being the most significant painting, has also been the one that has suffered the greatest transfer. It presided over the main altarpiece until 1810, when it was seized by Napoleon, taken to the Alcázar of Seville, and then to Madrid, where it was to be included in the Museum of Paintings, which never opened. When the French left, it was returned to the Capuchins in 1815, but... there was no calm then.
Before the invasion, the other paintings had been hidden in Cádiz, and two disappeared in the transfer: The Holy Face and Saint Michael the Archangel. The Guardian Angel was given to Seville Cathedral in 1814, in gratitude for having preserved some works. The deterioration of the rest forced the Franciscan community to hire a painter (Joaquín Bejarano) to restore them and the payment was… The Jubilee of the Porziuncola.
Bejarano later sold it to José de Madrazo, and from there it passed into the hands of Prince Sebastián Gabriel, whose artworks were seized by the government in 1835. It remained in the Museo de la Trinidad in Madrid until it was returned to the Prince in 1861. But he didn't keep it: his son sold it in 1898 to the Friends of Art in Cologne; that's why it now belongs to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in that German city.
A clarification, if Porziuncola sounds exotic to you: the name comes from the chapel of Santa María de la Porziuncola in the Basilica of Santa María de los Ángeles in Assisi. Murillo's work depicts the moment when Christ and the Virgin, surrounded by a choir of angels, appear to the saint at the altar in 1216, to grant the jubilee or plenary indulgence to pilgrims who visited the chapel, emblematic for the Franciscans.
Like so many of Murillo's works, these reflect the spirit of the Catholic Reformation and the desire to awaken the fervor of the faithful through the contemplation of scenes both divine and human. The Andalusian was the only 17th-century Sevillian painter to inherit Montañés's sense of proportion and expressive balance. Far from the mysticism of Zurbarán and the acute realism of Valdés Leal, his art is balanced, without any stridency, dominated by placid atmospheres and a tone closer to tranquil contemplation than to the rapturous Baroque movement.
This image is a public domain image, which means either that copyright has expired in the image or the copyright holder has waived their copyright. Franciscan Gallery charges for the access to high resolution copy of the image. Manually restoration was necessary in order to improve quality, without covering the original image.
Comments
Post a Comment