COELLO, Claudio

The somewhat sentimental painting shows the influence of Murillo. It was probably part of a series executed for the Carmelite Convent in San Hermenegildo, Madrid.

One of the most important tasks of a court painter in the age of absolutism was portraiture, either in the form of an individual, family or group portrait. Most of these commissioned works were sent to other royal houses. Whatever the occasion in each respective case, a portrait of this kind invariably had the primary function of representing the court.

Coello’s unfinished portrait of King Charles II gives us an opportunity of seeing how the artist worked. The three-quarter profile of the young king is set in a medallion. Coello has concentrated on depicting the brilliance of the shining armour and the rich folds of the bow, using free and spontaneous brush-strokes. Reproductions of a portrait of Charles II from the Städel in Frankfurt, lost in 1945, suggests that Coello toned down these lavish details somewhat in a later version. In comparison to paintings of Alsonso S�nchez Coello, who had worked for the Spanish court a hundred years earlier, Claudio Coello’s view of the monarch has little of the stringency of courtly ceremony. He is the last major representative of the Spanish tradition of painting that reached its climax in the Mannerism of the 16th century.

In 1683 Coello was rewarded with the appointment of royal painter, and in 1686 he was appointed court painter, filling the vacancy created by the death of Carreño. In 1685, Coello began his first important painting for the king, known as La Sagrada Forma, a highpoint in Spanish baroque painting. This large, ambitious work has a complex history which is rooted in the endless political intrigues of the reign.

This enormous work, which measures about five by three meters, is in fact a movable screen, which can be lowered by a pulley into the floor below, revealing the miraculous host of Gorkum, the “Sagrada Forma,” a monstrance that had shed blood when defiled by the Protestants in 1572. This precious object was transferred to the new altar in El Escorial, set up by the noblemen previously violating the sanctuary of the monastery in search of a refugee hiding there, in an expiatory ceremony held on 19 October 1684 and attended by the king, the offending noblemen, and members of the court, and it is this event represented in Coello’s picture.

The Sagrada Forma is at once a documentary, a ceremonial group portrait, a religious allegory, and a statement of political propaganda, all conjoined in a masterpiece of illusionistic painting. As a documentary, it records the ceremony of 19 October 1684, when Charles and members of the junta expunged the penalty of excommunication through the prescribed act of penitence. The king kneels sin devotion before the host of Gorkum, which is held by the prior. In the right corner are the offenders; members of the religious community fill the rest of the place, which is depicted with literal accuracy, to the pictures on the wall, the same ones installed by Vel�zquez in the 1650s.

The picture was intended to be more than an artistic “snapshot” of an important event. It also has an allegorical dimension, which is introduced by the inscription and by the winged personifications that soar in the upper reaches of the high-vaulted room. By inserting this textual and allegorical references Coello sought to shift the focus to an age-old Habsburg theme - the dynasty as the temporal defender of the faith.

This elegant, noble woman can be identified from the inscription seen in the bottom right corner of the painting. The attribution to Coello is debated, some critics attribute it to Juan Carreño de Miranda.

The painting resembles to another St Dominic representation by Coello in the Prado, Madrid.

THe picture was painted for the church of the Convent of the Rosary in Madrid, along with Saint Rose of Lima.

John of God (1495-1550) was a Portuguese-born soldier turned health-care worker in Spain, whose followers later formed the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, a worldwide Catholic religious institute.

Coello, of Portuguese origin, became a leading exponent of Baroque painting in 17th century Madrid, having assimilated the influence of Carreño and Flemish painting. He marks the end of the school of Madrid of this century. He was a pupil of Francesco Ricci and an artist with an extraordinary gift for veristic representation. Coello’s Baroque complexity, however, is combined with a naturalistic interest in detail that sometimes detracts from the formal hierarchy of his composition. A remarkable portraitist, he has bequeathed a number of pictures of Charles II in which the degeneracy of the last of the Hapsburgs is reflected without the least attempt at mitigation.

Typical in this large work is the diagonal axis of the figures, stressing the dynamic movement of the saint, and the framing elements of classical architecture. The sensual and sumptuous colour recalls Rubens, whose pictures in the Royal Collection Coello is known to have studied.

Coello’s religious paintings are conceived with typical Baroque opulence.

The painting is signed.