Lot 148: ALEJO FERNÁNDEZ

ALEJO FERNÁNDEZ SEVILLE CIRCA 1475 - 1543 THE DEPOSITION oil on panel, transferred to canvas, arched top, gold ground, unframed 188.6 by 186.1 cm.; 74 1/4 by 73 1/4 in.

Much of our scant knowledge of Alejo Fernández's formative years was pieced together by the great art historians Don Diego Angulo Iñiguez and Don José de la Torre y del Cerro, the latter of whom discovered a large series of documents on Cordoban art which detailed certain events from Alejo's youth, such as his marriage to María in circa 1496 and the birth of their son Francisco a year later.υ1 In 1508 Alejo seems to have moved with his brother Jorge, a sculptor, to Seville and, following some successful early commissions (from, for example, the cathedral chapter to carry out painting, gilding and tooling work on the figures of the reredos of the main altar), Alejo established himself in that city and he seems to have remained there for the best part of his life. Throughout his career, however, his style is distinctly northern if flavour to the extent that most critics believe him to have been born and bred in Germany or Flanders. Many of the figure groups that populate his religous works are based on engravings by Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schöngauer while the facial types, draperies and landscapes usually follow a distinctly Flemish pattern. Such influences are nowhere more apparent than in the present work, which was probably originally conceived as an altarpiece for a parish church near Seville, such as that of Ecija where Alejo's 'Santiago' altarpiece compares very closely to this painting.υ2

We are grateful to Dr. Isabel Mateo for endorsing the attribution to Alejo Fernández on the basis of photographs.



1. See C. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, vol. X, Cambridge (Mass.) 1950, p. 8ff.
2. See D.A. Iñiguez, Alejo Fernandez, Seville 1946, p. 23, reproduced plates 38-40.