Prado opens exhibit dedicated to top Renaissance master

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Museo del Prado is presenting ‘The Divine Morales’, an exhibition intended as a testament to the work and life of Luis de Morales the ‘Divine’ practically a century after the Prado hosted the first monographic exhibition devoted to the artist, Art Daily reports.

Although Morales’s most representative creations were widely disseminated thanks to the existence of his own studio and through the versions produced by other painters and followers, this show brings together a careful selection solely of works that display the high quality standards of Morales’s extraordinary painting technique, including a sculpture by Alonso Berruguete from the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid which is closely linked to Morales’s Passion themes on account of the spirituality it conveys and the sculptural values found in this master’s painting.

This selection of works by Morales, mostly small-format paintings and half-length figures, illustrates the images he used throughout his career: the Virgin and Child, such as the popular Virgin Suckling the Child in the Museo del Prado; Christ crowned with thorns, such as the Man of Sorrows in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; tied to the column, carrying the cross or already dead in his mother’s arms, such as the Pietà from the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. They make up a small repertoire of images that are usually devoid of temporal or spatial references in order to provide perfect conditions for immersing the viewer in religious contemplation.