Lot 263: Antonio Acisco Palomino de Castro y Velasco , Bujalance 1653/55 - 1726 Madrid the martyrdom of Saint Pelagius oil on canvas

signed with monogram lower right: A °P oil on canvas

measurements note 120 by 120 cm.; 47 1/4 by 47 1/4 in.

Believed to have been in the collection of the Marques de Camarasa, Spain, during the 19th century;
Thence by descent to the present owner.

PROPERTY FROM A SPANISH NOBLE COLLECTION
Pelagius was a young boy of Asturias who was left by his uncle as a hostage to the Moors of Cordoba. As he remained unransomed for three years, the Cordoban ruler Emir Abd al-Rahman III offered to free him if he would but renounce his Christianity and become a Muslim. He refused, and the Emir ordered him tortured. Pelagius died after six hours of agony. The episode was depicted by many 17th century painters, perhaps most famously by Antonio de Castillo whose great canvas, painted in 1645, still decorates the cathedral in Córdoba.υ1 It may be that Palomino's version owes something to Castillo's, his figure of Emir Abd al-Rahman, for example, being remarkably similar to the latter's.

Although perhaps best known for his treatise on painting, El Museo Pictórico y Escala Optica (1715-24) and other writings on art, Palomino was also a hugely successful painter. The present work belongs to the pictorial tradition established in Madrid during the mid-17υth century by the likes of Juan Carreño de Miranda and Claudio Coello. With this latter Palomino collaborated on what was probably his earliest important commission, the decoration of the ceiling of the Galería del Cierzo in the Alcázar in Madrid in 1686. The present work was executed at some point after the completion of this ceiling, probably at some point in the 1690s as suggested by Benito Navarrete Prieto, to whom we are grateful. At this time Palomino's work became greatly influenced by that of Luca Giordano who had arrived in Spain in 1692.


1. See M. Nancarrow & B. Navarrete Priete, Antonio del Castillo, Madrid 2004, pp. 337-339, reproduced.