Lot Essay
Diego Velzquez's painting of Saint Rufina was in the collection of Don Luis de Haro (1598-1661), Marqus de Eliche and VI Marqus del Carpio, who succeeded his uncle, the Conde-Duque de Olivares as prime minister to King Philip IV in 1643. A fragmentary post-mortem inventory of Luis de Haro's collection is known (M. Burke, Private Collections of Italian Art in Seventeenth-Century Spain, 1984, II, pp. 200-3) and the present painting is listed among the works owned by Haro which were added to this inventory, appearing as 'Una pintura de Santa Rufina, de medio cuerpo, con palma y unas tazas en las manos, original de Diego Velzquez, de tres cuartas y media de alto y dos tercias y dos dedos de ancho' ('a painting of St. Rufina, half length, with a palm and some cups in her hands, original by Diego Velzquez, three-quarters and a half in height and two-thirds and two fingers in width') (Barcia, loc. cit.). The dimensions of the painting listed in Haro's inventory (73.5 x 59.6cm.) are almost identical to the size of the present Saint Rufina. This document is a copy of a lost original in the archives of the Duques de Alba made circa 1802 when new lists of the picture collection of Luis de Haro were compiled to facilitate the claim of the Duque de Berwick to the possessions of the heirs of Cayetana, XVII Duquesa de Alba, who died in 1802 without issue (M. Burke, op. cit., pp. 194-9 and 205, lot 231). It is therefore possible that the Saint Rufina entered the Alba collection. However, its 17th century history as part of the great Carpio picture collections is unclear. The painting was not listed in the inventory of Don Luis de Haro's paintings drawn up in 1648 on the death of his wife, Catalina Fernndez de Cordona (ibid., pp. 139-49; and M. Burke and P. Cherry, Collections of Paintings in Madrid, 1601-1755, 1997, I, pp. 437-53, doc. 45). Nor was the painting listed in the post-mortem inventories of Don Gaspar de Haro y Guzmn, VII Marqus del Carpio, owner of Velzquez's Rokeby Venus (National Gallery, London) among other works by the artist (ibid., II, pp. 815-29, 830-77, docs. 114-5).
Technical examination of the Saint Rufina has convincingly established a date for the work between 1632-34. The painting is technically and stylistically very close to Velquez's Sibyl (Fig. 1; Madrid, Museo del Prado), which is also painted from a live model and in which the sitter wears the same headdress. In both paintings, the subject is set against a neutral light-earth background through which the grain of the canvas is seen. The painting of the subject's hair with fluent strokes of thinned paint is very similar in both works. The bold impasto with which Velzquez has optically modelled the white drapery of the saint's collar and cuff is typical of the artist's loose facture in the 1630s, seen also in the collar of the Sibyl and, for instance, the cuffs of Juan Martnez Montaes (Madrid, Museo del Prado) and the dcolletage of the Woman with a Fan (London, Wallace Collection). Velzquez studied the martyr's palm from a real dried palm branch, which are still commonly used in Palm Sunday celebrations in Spain, and confidently painted this detail directly over the costume of the saint.
The picture was painted in Madrid, but represents a Sevillian subject since Saint Rufina and her sister Saint Justa were patron saints and protectors of the city of Seville (A. de Quintanadueas, SJ, Santos de la ciudad de Sevilla y su arzobispado, 1637, pp. 73-84). The sisters were humble Christian artisans who lived in Roman Seville and earned a living by selling pottery. They were well known for their acts of charity, but when they refused to make offerings to a statue of Venus carried in procession past their house, their wares were broken, to which the sisters responded by breaking the statue. For this, they were imprisoned, tortured and killed by the Roman governor in the year 287AD. Their prison cell and relics were venerated in Seville in the convent of the Santssima Trinadad during Velzquez's lifetime.
The representation of the two saints in paintings and sculptures was traditional among Sevillian artists. Their images were painted on the Giralda bell-tower of the cathedral by Luis de Vargas between 1563-8 and are seen in Miguel de Esquivel's paintings of SS. Justa and Rufina painted circa 1620 (Fig. 2). In the seventeenth century they were the subject of individiual canvases, such as the painting by Francisco de Zurbarn in the National Gallery, Dublin. Their traditional iconography represented them bearing their identifying attributes of pottery, which are unbroken white-bodied vessels in the paintings of Velzquez and Zurbarn, which may symbolize their virginal condition and unshakable Christian faith. Zurbarn was responsible for creating a vogue for naturalistic images of virgin martyrs, often splendidly attired and whose likenesses were taken from live models. Occasionally, female sitters in the period also had their portraits painted in the guise of their name saint or favorite saint (E. Orozco Daz, Retratos a lo divino, in Temas del Barroco de Poesa y pintura, 1947, pp. 31-5). Zurbarn too painted these retratos a lo divino, such as the beautiful pair of sisters depicted as saints in the Museo de Bilbao (Figs. 3-4). Velzquez's painting clearly portrays a real person. This is typical of his naturalistic approach to art, which led him to paint the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (London, National Gallery) from a young girl or to use a real model for his painting of a Sibyl (Fig. 1) in a work which is contemporary with the Saint Rufina. The rather plain dress of Saint Rufina in the painting would have been regarded in the seventeenth century as suitably decorous attire for the representation of humble virgin martyrs, which is unlike the flamboyant and fantastical attire which characterized the depiction of saints in the hands of some of Velzquez's contemporaries. This is also in keeping with the understatement which informs Velzquez's religious paintings and endows them with a powerful realism, seen to great effect in his Sevillian painting of the Adoration of the Magi (Madrid, Museo del Prado).
It is unclear why Velzquez should have returned to a Sevillian subject. It could, of course, be the result of a commission from a Sevillian patron. It is also possible that the painting is a portrait of one of Velzquez's own daughters. Like Saints Justa and Rufina, Velzquez's two daughters were sevillanas; Francisca was baptized in Seville on May 18, 1619 and Ignacia baptized on January 1, 1621. Francisca Velzquez was fourteen years old when she married the painter Juan Bautista del Mazo in Madrid in 1633 and Ignacia was twelve, and either sister could have posed for her father's painting of Saint Rufina soon after his return from Italy in early 1631. There is no evidence that Velzquez painted a pendant picture of Saint Justa to complement this one. This was not necessary, in fact, since the identities of the sisters were indistinguishable and they shared the same attributes, something which is reflected in the provenance and literature of the present work, where the painting is variously named after one and the other sisters throughout its history. Since the earliest mention of the painting identifies the saint as Saint Rufina, this title is the preferred one.
Dr. Peter Cherry
TECHNICAL EXAMINATION
Technical examination of the painting of Saint Rufina, one of the patron saints of Seville, demonstrates many similarities with Velzquez's technique as seen in other works by the artist that were painted in the early 1630s.
The x-radiograph (Fig. 5) of the painting shows a preparatory ground layer which is strongly defined in the photograph, from which a faint and somewhat blurred image of the saint emerges. The marks left by Velzquez's palette knife in laying down the preparatory ground can be seen clearly. A number of indistinct white spots which can be seen are caused by grains of pigment remaining in the paint mixture when it was applied by the knife and brush during the painting of the work. Such distinctive characteristics of Velzquez's technique contribute to the overall lack of clarity in the x-radiographic image of the painting.
The x-radiograph demonstrates a number of telling technical similarities with other paintings by Velzquez. The manner in which the light areas have been applied to model the head of Saint Rufina is very close to Velzquez's technique in his painting of the Sibyl (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1197; C. Garrido Prez, Velzquez, Tcnica ye Evolucin, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992, p. 198). The overall appearance of the image in the x-radiograph is also similar to Velzquez's paintings of King Philip IV and the Princes dressed as huntsmen painted for the Torre de la Parada, particularly the portraits of the Cardinal-Infante Don Ferdinand (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1186; Garrido Prez, 1992, p. 394) and the Infante Baltasar Carlos (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1189; Garrido Prez, p. 404). The pose of Saint Rufina is also comparable with that of these latter two sitters and is a common one in Velzquez's work, in which the figure turns three-quarters to the front and wears a fixed, somewhat far-away gaze.
The palm which is held by Saint Rufina as a symbol of her martyrdom stands out strongly in the x-radiograph and has been painted over the drapery of the saint. The collar and cuff of her white shirt also register strongly in the photographs and are animated passages of painting. These latter details of her costume have been painted in a loose and rapid manner, in which the white lead pigment has been directly applied with fine brush strokes. In the x-radiograph image, the ceramic plate and bowls which the saint carries, however, can barely be made out from the background.
Velzquez's canvas support is closest to those the artist used in the transitionary period in his work and is similar to that used for the Sibyl and the portrait of Doa Mara de Austria, Queen of Hungary (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1187, Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 194-195). The canvas is known as a 'tafetn' type due to its weave and the density of the warp and weft is between 11-12 threads per cm2. This support has been relined with another canvas which has increased the size of the picture on all four sides and has left the mark of the old stretcher on the right hand side and the upper edge of the picture.
Analysis of the structure of the picture shows that is is painted on a canvas which has been primed with glue size and with a uniform layer of grey-brown preparatory ground laid over this. The preparation has been ground unevenly and in this respect it is similar to the preparation of the portrait of the Cardinal-Infante Dressed as a Huntsman. It is made up of a mixture or iron oxide, organic black, white lead and calcite along with some traces of azurite blue and vermilion of mercury pigment. This preparatory ground forms a compact and hard layer. Velzquez then changed and lightened this original optically dark preparatory layer by the application of a layer of lead white. This process is again similar to that found in his Sibyl, although here the application of the light lead white layer was a partial one, whereas in the painting of Saint Rufina it covers the whole canvas. The color is applied in a straightforward manner; a base layer established the masses of lights and darks, followed by touches which defined the volumes, tones and details, and left an exciting play of brushstrokes on the picture surface.
The quantities of lead white increase on the left hand side of the picture, due to the angle of illumination of the figure. There are a number of adjustments to both the left and right contours of the saint, who was originally broader in proportion.
The materials used in the present painting are the habitual ones in the work of Velzquez. The key to his skilled technique does not lie in the pigments he used, which are the ones normally employed by painters in the period, but in the way these have been ground and used by the artist in building up the image, in the graphic eloquence of the brush and in the application of the final touches. The blue pigments are azurite, as are the green colors, and the tonality of these depends on the quantities of lead white mixed in with the former color and the amounts of medium mixed with the latter. The green tonality of the cloak of Saint Rufina is typical--indeed unique--of the work of Velzquez and can be seen in the green scarf in the hair of the Sibyl, in the green jerkins of his portraits of members of the royal family as huntsmen for the Torre de la Parada, and in many of the later paintings by the artist. In the dark tones there are greater quantities of calcite and this, along with the medium, gives transparency to the color, which can clearly be seen in the infra-red image of the painting. The flesh tones are formed with a mixture of white lead, calcite and small quantities of azurite, organic red lake and vermilion of mercury, with the last pigment applied in greater quantities in the ruddy areas of the face. Vermilion is also used in the red tone of the drapery around the saint's waist.
The red-purple color of the drapery at Saint Rufina's waist is made up of a mixture of azurite and white lead, over which has been applied a layer of organic red lake. Calcite is also present in all of these layers, in increasing quanitites in the final layer. White lead pigment is used in larger quantities in the final touches which model the light areas of the drapery. Analysis of the white lead shows tin impurities in the pigment, which have also been found in Velzquez's paintings from the early years of the 1630s, such as the portrait of Mara de Austria, Queen of Hungary and the Views of the Villa Medici (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. nos. 1210 and 1211; Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 212-217).
As previously mentioned, aesthetically speaking, the Saint Rufina is closely related to Velzquez's painting of the Sibyl in the Prado. There are obvious similarities between the paintings in the generous drapery configurations, the white collar and green tones, as well as the headdress and the manner in which the hair is painted. Indeed, the rapidly painted and semi-transparent locks of hair falling over the head of the figure are the same in both pictures. The same type of brushstrokes can be seen in the mane of hair of the white horse painted by Velzquez in his Surrender of Breda (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1172; Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 324-337). The final touches with which Velzquez has modelled the features of the face of Saint Rufina are very like the fine brushwork which defines the details and animates the painting of the face in his portrait of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand as a Huntsman. A restoration of the Saint Rufina would only further demonstrate its closeness in style to the paintings referred to here. The fact that the head of St. Rufina is less densely worked than Velzquez's royal portraits is due to the different nature of the paintings, since Velzquez did not paint a royal portrait in the same way as that of a private sitter. The technique and style of painting seen in the Saint Rufina is in complete accordance with Velzquez's rapid and direct style of painting around the early 1630s when he created his works for the Hall of Realms of the palace of the Buen Retiro.
In conclusion, the visual and technical examination of the Saint Rufina demonstrates that this is a picture painted by Velzquez between 1632-4. Its technical characteristics and style correspond strongly with the works which Velzquez painted at this time. The analysis of the technical qualitites and the pictorial structure of the painting provides the fundamental evidence which supports its attribution to the hand of Diego Velzquez.
Professor Alfonso E. Prez Snchez supports the attribution of the present painting to Velzquez and is preparing its publication.
Technical examination of the Saint Rufina has convincingly established a date for the work between 1632-34. The painting is technically and stylistically very close to Velquez's Sibyl (Fig. 1; Madrid, Museo del Prado), which is also painted from a live model and in which the sitter wears the same headdress. In both paintings, the subject is set against a neutral light-earth background through which the grain of the canvas is seen. The painting of the subject's hair with fluent strokes of thinned paint is very similar in both works. The bold impasto with which Velzquez has optically modelled the white drapery of the saint's collar and cuff is typical of the artist's loose facture in the 1630s, seen also in the collar of the Sibyl and, for instance, the cuffs of Juan Martnez Montaes (Madrid, Museo del Prado) and the dcolletage of the Woman with a Fan (London, Wallace Collection). Velzquez studied the martyr's palm from a real dried palm branch, which are still commonly used in Palm Sunday celebrations in Spain, and confidently painted this detail directly over the costume of the saint.
The picture was painted in Madrid, but represents a Sevillian subject since Saint Rufina and her sister Saint Justa were patron saints and protectors of the city of Seville (A. de Quintanadueas, SJ, Santos de la ciudad de Sevilla y su arzobispado, 1637, pp. 73-84). The sisters were humble Christian artisans who lived in Roman Seville and earned a living by selling pottery. They were well known for their acts of charity, but when they refused to make offerings to a statue of Venus carried in procession past their house, their wares were broken, to which the sisters responded by breaking the statue. For this, they were imprisoned, tortured and killed by the Roman governor in the year 287AD. Their prison cell and relics were venerated in Seville in the convent of the Santssima Trinadad during Velzquez's lifetime.
The representation of the two saints in paintings and sculptures was traditional among Sevillian artists. Their images were painted on the Giralda bell-tower of the cathedral by Luis de Vargas between 1563-8 and are seen in Miguel de Esquivel's paintings of SS. Justa and Rufina painted circa 1620 (Fig. 2). In the seventeenth century they were the subject of individiual canvases, such as the painting by Francisco de Zurbarn in the National Gallery, Dublin. Their traditional iconography represented them bearing their identifying attributes of pottery, which are unbroken white-bodied vessels in the paintings of Velzquez and Zurbarn, which may symbolize their virginal condition and unshakable Christian faith. Zurbarn was responsible for creating a vogue for naturalistic images of virgin martyrs, often splendidly attired and whose likenesses were taken from live models. Occasionally, female sitters in the period also had their portraits painted in the guise of their name saint or favorite saint (E. Orozco Daz, Retratos a lo divino, in Temas del Barroco de Poesa y pintura, 1947, pp. 31-5). Zurbarn too painted these retratos a lo divino, such as the beautiful pair of sisters depicted as saints in the Museo de Bilbao (Figs. 3-4). Velzquez's painting clearly portrays a real person. This is typical of his naturalistic approach to art, which led him to paint the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (London, National Gallery) from a young girl or to use a real model for his painting of a Sibyl (Fig. 1) in a work which is contemporary with the Saint Rufina. The rather plain dress of Saint Rufina in the painting would have been regarded in the seventeenth century as suitably decorous attire for the representation of humble virgin martyrs, which is unlike the flamboyant and fantastical attire which characterized the depiction of saints in the hands of some of Velzquez's contemporaries. This is also in keeping with the understatement which informs Velzquez's religious paintings and endows them with a powerful realism, seen to great effect in his Sevillian painting of the Adoration of the Magi (Madrid, Museo del Prado).
It is unclear why Velzquez should have returned to a Sevillian subject. It could, of course, be the result of a commission from a Sevillian patron. It is also possible that the painting is a portrait of one of Velzquez's own daughters. Like Saints Justa and Rufina, Velzquez's two daughters were sevillanas; Francisca was baptized in Seville on May 18, 1619 and Ignacia baptized on January 1, 1621. Francisca Velzquez was fourteen years old when she married the painter Juan Bautista del Mazo in Madrid in 1633 and Ignacia was twelve, and either sister could have posed for her father's painting of Saint Rufina soon after his return from Italy in early 1631. There is no evidence that Velzquez painted a pendant picture of Saint Justa to complement this one. This was not necessary, in fact, since the identities of the sisters were indistinguishable and they shared the same attributes, something which is reflected in the provenance and literature of the present work, where the painting is variously named after one and the other sisters throughout its history. Since the earliest mention of the painting identifies the saint as Saint Rufina, this title is the preferred one.
Dr. Peter Cherry
TECHNICAL EXAMINATION
Technical examination of the painting of Saint Rufina, one of the patron saints of Seville, demonstrates many similarities with Velzquez's technique as seen in other works by the artist that were painted in the early 1630s.
The x-radiograph (Fig. 5) of the painting shows a preparatory ground layer which is strongly defined in the photograph, from which a faint and somewhat blurred image of the saint emerges. The marks left by Velzquez's palette knife in laying down the preparatory ground can be seen clearly. A number of indistinct white spots which can be seen are caused by grains of pigment remaining in the paint mixture when it was applied by the knife and brush during the painting of the work. Such distinctive characteristics of Velzquez's technique contribute to the overall lack of clarity in the x-radiographic image of the painting.
The x-radiograph demonstrates a number of telling technical similarities with other paintings by Velzquez. The manner in which the light areas have been applied to model the head of Saint Rufina is very close to Velzquez's technique in his painting of the Sibyl (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1197; C. Garrido Prez, Velzquez, Tcnica ye Evolucin, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 1992, p. 198). The overall appearance of the image in the x-radiograph is also similar to Velzquez's paintings of King Philip IV and the Princes dressed as huntsmen painted for the Torre de la Parada, particularly the portraits of the Cardinal-Infante Don Ferdinand (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1186; Garrido Prez, 1992, p. 394) and the Infante Baltasar Carlos (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1189; Garrido Prez, p. 404). The pose of Saint Rufina is also comparable with that of these latter two sitters and is a common one in Velzquez's work, in which the figure turns three-quarters to the front and wears a fixed, somewhat far-away gaze.
The palm which is held by Saint Rufina as a symbol of her martyrdom stands out strongly in the x-radiograph and has been painted over the drapery of the saint. The collar and cuff of her white shirt also register strongly in the photographs and are animated passages of painting. These latter details of her costume have been painted in a loose and rapid manner, in which the white lead pigment has been directly applied with fine brush strokes. In the x-radiograph image, the ceramic plate and bowls which the saint carries, however, can barely be made out from the background.
Velzquez's canvas support is closest to those the artist used in the transitionary period in his work and is similar to that used for the Sibyl and the portrait of Doa Mara de Austria, Queen of Hungary (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1187, Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 194-195). The canvas is known as a 'tafetn' type due to its weave and the density of the warp and weft is between 11-12 threads per cm
Analysis of the structure of the picture shows that is is painted on a canvas which has been primed with glue size and with a uniform layer of grey-brown preparatory ground laid over this. The preparation has been ground unevenly and in this respect it is similar to the preparation of the portrait of the Cardinal-Infante Dressed as a Huntsman. It is made up of a mixture or iron oxide, organic black, white lead and calcite along with some traces of azurite blue and vermilion of mercury pigment. This preparatory ground forms a compact and hard layer. Velzquez then changed and lightened this original optically dark preparatory layer by the application of a layer of lead white. This process is again similar to that found in his Sibyl, although here the application of the light lead white layer was a partial one, whereas in the painting of Saint Rufina it covers the whole canvas. The color is applied in a straightforward manner; a base layer established the masses of lights and darks, followed by touches which defined the volumes, tones and details, and left an exciting play of brushstrokes on the picture surface.
The quantities of lead white increase on the left hand side of the picture, due to the angle of illumination of the figure. There are a number of adjustments to both the left and right contours of the saint, who was originally broader in proportion.
The materials used in the present painting are the habitual ones in the work of Velzquez. The key to his skilled technique does not lie in the pigments he used, which are the ones normally employed by painters in the period, but in the way these have been ground and used by the artist in building up the image, in the graphic eloquence of the brush and in the application of the final touches. The blue pigments are azurite, as are the green colors, and the tonality of these depends on the quantities of lead white mixed in with the former color and the amounts of medium mixed with the latter. The green tonality of the cloak of Saint Rufina is typical--indeed unique--of the work of Velzquez and can be seen in the green scarf in the hair of the Sibyl, in the green jerkins of his portraits of members of the royal family as huntsmen for the Torre de la Parada, and in many of the later paintings by the artist. In the dark tones there are greater quantities of calcite and this, along with the medium, gives transparency to the color, which can clearly be seen in the infra-red image of the painting. The flesh tones are formed with a mixture of white lead, calcite and small quantities of azurite, organic red lake and vermilion of mercury, with the last pigment applied in greater quantities in the ruddy areas of the face. Vermilion is also used in the red tone of the drapery around the saint's waist.
The red-purple color of the drapery at Saint Rufina's waist is made up of a mixture of azurite and white lead, over which has been applied a layer of organic red lake. Calcite is also present in all of these layers, in increasing quanitites in the final layer. White lead pigment is used in larger quantities in the final touches which model the light areas of the drapery. Analysis of the white lead shows tin impurities in the pigment, which have also been found in Velzquez's paintings from the early years of the 1630s, such as the portrait of Mara de Austria, Queen of Hungary and the Views of the Villa Medici (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. nos. 1210 and 1211; Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 212-217).
As previously mentioned, aesthetically speaking, the Saint Rufina is closely related to Velzquez's painting of the Sibyl in the Prado. There are obvious similarities between the paintings in the generous drapery configurations, the white collar and green tones, as well as the headdress and the manner in which the hair is painted. Indeed, the rapidly painted and semi-transparent locks of hair falling over the head of the figure are the same in both pictures. The same type of brushstrokes can be seen in the mane of hair of the white horse painted by Velzquez in his Surrender of Breda (Museo del Prado, Madrid, Inv. no. 1172; Garrido Prez, 1992, pp. 324-337). The final touches with which Velzquez has modelled the features of the face of Saint Rufina are very like the fine brushwork which defines the details and animates the painting of the face in his portrait of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand as a Huntsman. A restoration of the Saint Rufina would only further demonstrate its closeness in style to the paintings referred to here. The fact that the head of St. Rufina is less densely worked than Velzquez's royal portraits is due to the different nature of the paintings, since Velzquez did not paint a royal portrait in the same way as that of a private sitter. The technique and style of painting seen in the Saint Rufina is in complete accordance with Velzquez's rapid and direct style of painting around the early 1630s when he created his works for the Hall of Realms of the palace of the Buen Retiro.
In conclusion, the visual and technical examination of the Saint Rufina demonstrates that this is a picture painted by Velzquez between 1632-4. Its technical characteristics and style correspond strongly with the works which Velzquez painted at this time. The analysis of the technical qualitites and the pictorial structure of the painting provides the fundamental evidence which supports its attribution to the hand of Diego Velzquez.
Professor Alfonso E. Prez Snchez supports the attribution of the present painting to Velzquez and is preparing its publication.