1229. VIRGIN AND CHILD.
Luis de Morales (Spanish: 1509-1586).
Luis de Morales was born at Badajos, and is one of the most native of Spanish artists. He did not resort to Italy, such foreign influence as is discernible in him being rather that of the Flemings; and the religious sanctity of his work won him the surname of "the Divine." "His subjects, always devotional, were," we are told, "mostly of the saddest, as the Saviour in his hour of suffering, or dead in his mother's arms, or the weeping Madonna. His object was to excite devotion through images of pain, and to this end the forms are attenuated and the faces disfigured by the marks of past or present anguish." He was very largely commissioned by churches and convents, and his fame spread over Spain. He was called to the court of Philip II. in 1563, but was dismissed as soon as he had painted one picture, and thereafter he fell into great poverty. He had appeared at court, it is said, "in the style of a grand seigneur" which seemed to the king and his courtiers absurd in a mere painter, and was the cause of their disfavour. Some years later, however, the king, learning of his poverty, granted him a pension. In his earlier period, Morales painted crowded compositions with numerous figures; in his later, smaller pictures, such as the one before us.