Spanish school; first third of the 16th century. "San... Lot 3

Spanish school; first third of the 16th century. "San Mateo". Oil on panel. It presents repainting and old restorations. Measurements: 62 x 43 cm. In this work we can observe Saint Matthew, accompanied by the winged man who identifies him in the Tetramorphos, alluding to his Gospel: his text tries above all to characterize Christ as King of the Jews and as the Messiah that the Scriptures prophesied, emphasizing his life as a man. Another example of this is the presence of the bundle and the pen, which the saint actively holds, showing himself to the viewer as the writer of one of the Gospels. The scene, which takes place in an interior, has very few elements that do not refer to the saint's iconography. These are the armrest of a chair and the table as a lectern on which he rests the scriptures. The scene has been conceived through diagonals, which do not follow a perspective based on the vanishing point, but rather dispense with it, focusing attention not so much on the representation of the saint, but rather on his holiness. Both the angular forms of the features and the folds of the clothing and the use of intense, complementary colours create a highly expressive scene. It is worth noting the detail achieved by the artist through a very short and precise brushstroke, so that all the wrinkles of the saint's habit can be appreciated. Saint Matthew the Evangelist was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus and, according to Christian tradition, the author of the Gospel that bears his name. He is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, and also in the Gospel of Luke, under the name of Levi. Matthew is identified with a winged man or angel, a symbol of the tetramorph of the prophet Ezekiel. This association is due to the fact that his Gospel begins by reviewing the genealogy of Christ, the Son of Man and also the Son of God. Spain was, at the beginning of the 16th century, the European nation best prepared to receive the new humanist concepts of life and art due to its spiritual, political and economic conditions, although from the point of view of plastic forms, its adaptation of those introduced by Italy was slower due to the need to learn the new techniques and to change the taste of the clientele. Painting reflects perhaps better than other artistic fields this desire to return to the classical Greco-Roman world, which exalts the individuality of man, creating a new style whose vitality goes beyond mere copying. Anatomy, the movement of the figures, compositions with a sense of perspective and balance, the naturalistic play of folds, the classical attitudes of the figures soon began to be valued; but the strong Gothic tradition maintained expressivity as a vehicle for the profound spiritualist sense that informs our best Renaissance paintings. Although it is worth mentioning that there was still a medieval pictorial tradition, with aesthetic precepts really established in society, so that both schools coexisted and influenced each other, giving rise to an idiosyncratic and very personal style. This strong and healthy tradition favoured the continuity of religious painting, which accepted the formal beauty offered by Italian Renaissance art with a sense of balance that avoided its predominance over the immaterial content that animated the forms. In the early years of the century, Italian works arrived in our lands and some of our artists went to Italy, where they learned the new standards at first hand in the most progressive centres of Italian art, whether in Florence or Rome, or even in Naples.