Lot 153: Alejo Fernández , Seville circa 1475 - 1543 the decapitation of Saint John the Baptist oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 108 by 80 cm.; 42 1/2 by 31 1/2 in.

Probably painted towards the end of the 1520s, this panel by the Sevillian painter Alejo Fernández has only recently come to light. The burgeoning Flemish influence in Alejo's art permeates almost every facet of this painting, from the architecture, which echoes that of certain Antwerp Mannerist panels such as Jan de Beer's Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, to the figures of Salome and her attendants at the left who, in both their conception and their dress, are quintessentially Flemish. The northern influence is however most apparent in the design of the two protagonists, especially that of the executioner whose form exactly follows that of his counterpart in Albrecht Dürer's engraving of the The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, of 1497 (fig. 1). The pose of St. John too, is clearly based on that of the kneeling Saint Catherine, albeit more loosely. Stylistically the present work compares extremely closely with Alejo's panels in the church of San Juan, Marchena, depicting, again, a Beheading of St. John along with a Wedding at Cana, which were executed between 1521 and 1523.υ1 It is with the Beheading that the relationship can be best discerned, notably in the figures themselves, and especially in those of Salome and her attendants. Given their stylistic links with the Antwerp Mannerists, it is not surprising that the Marchena panels were for a long time attributed to an anonymous Flemish painter. 1. See D. Angulo-Iñiguez, Alejo Fernandez, Seville 1946, plates 46 and 47.