Attributed to SEBASTIÁN DE LLANOS Y VALDÉS (Seville, ca.1605 1677) Equestrian Portrait of the Emperor Caligula Oil on canvas 211.4 x 151.7cm Ca.1660 Provenance: Private collection, USA In the certificate of his first marriage to Jerónima Bernal in 1631, Sebastián de Llanos y Valdés is stated to be the son of Sebastián Ruiz and of María de la Cruz and to be an independent painter. He must have been born around 1605 or slightly later. Following the death of his first wife, in 1633 he married Gregoria de Arellano who was the mother of his only child, Francisco José de Valdés, who subsequently entered the Dominican Order. After her death the artist married again in 1649 to Maria Pellicer, who survived him. Antonio Palomino did not devote a biography to him, but stated in his biography of Alonso Cano that Llanos had a fight with Cano, who was lodging in his house and was seriously injured in his right hand, for which reason Cano left Seville in 1638. Although he is said to have been born into the minor nobility, using the prefix don in front of his name, and that he led a comfortable life that was relatively unrelated to his professional activities, renting expensive houses, for example, Llanos certainly appears in the documents as closely involved in guild life in Seville: in 1653 he was appointed Chief Official of the Guild of Painters in that city, and as such examined Cornelis Schut for entry one year later. He is also known to have taken on various apprentices, included Juan Real in 1656 at the unusually young age of nine. Llanos was one of the founders of the Academia de Bellas Artes in the parish of San Lucas in 1660. He played an active role in the institution, making generous financial contributions. He was appointed a consul of the Academy at the time of its foundation and held that position again, jointly with Juan Valdés de Leal, in 1663. One year later Valdés de Leal stepped down and Llanos was elected president, achieving more votes than Cornelis Schut. In 1668 he was again president, elected for the third time, and was the painter who held the position for longest. Llanos died on 10 October 1677, having made a will in which he declared his wish to be buried in the church of the Magdalena, of which he was a parishioner, or in the
Dominican monastery of San Pablo where his son had taken orders and where he was finally buried. Despite his apparently comfortable economic situation he did not order any funerary masses because I am very poor, perhaps from having over-spent. In his will Llanos adds that he did not bring any possessions to his last marriage and that those that he had at the time were of little value and had come from his wife s dowry. Llanos s work reveals the influence of Herrera el Viejo, evident in the monumental, full-length Evangelists in the Casa de Pilatos in Seville (Fundación Medinaceli). This influence is modified by that of Zurbarán and the Genoese painters Bernardo Strozzi and Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari, from whom Llanos derived a tenebrist illumination and highly expressive figure types. This is evident in the Pietà of 1666 and Saint John the Baptist before the Sanhedrin of 1668 (both Seville cathedral). In the Virgin of the Rosary, again in Seville cathedral, the model for the Virgin is taken directly from Zurbarán, albeit imbued with a greater sense of Baroque movement. Dating from 1670 are the severed heads of Saint Paul and Saint John the Baptist in the church of the Salvador in Seville. While not an invention of the artist, the effect of pathos produced by these heads, standing out from the shadows through the bright light that falls directly onto them, ensured their success in the context of popular devotion in Seville and there are a number of replicas by the artist himself and various studio copies, some attributed to Valdés Leal, who subsequently depicted this subject himself. The present Emperor Caligula is based on a print by Antonio Tempesta and Stradanus published around 1596 to illustrate De cesarum XII vitis by Suetonius (fig. 1). It was probably one of a series of Roman emperors on horseback. Such series, normally comprising twelve canvases, became popular in the late 16 th century and two sets are documented as being sent to Veracruz in 1593 and 1604, while in 1648 another set of twelve is recorded in the posthumous inventory of Don Tomàs de Mañara in Seville. Zurbarán s studio, among others, was active in the production of series of this type and in 1647 he entrusted Antonio de Alarcón in Lima to obtain payment for a set that he had sent from Seville (see Navarrete, B., and Delenda, O., exhib. cat., Zurbarán y su obrador. Pinturas para el Nuevo Mundo, Mexico DF, 1999, pp.77-79). The present Emperor Caligula is painted in the same style and technique as a group of four paintings depicting David, Zacchaeus, Longinus and Centurion (figs. 2-5) in a British collection. Traditionally attributed to the circle of Valdés Leal, they were given to the studio of Zurbarán in the catalogue of the exhibition Zurbarán y su obrador. Pinturas para el Nuevo Mundo (op. cit., pp.68-69) purely on the base of their subjectmatter and format, which are comparable to those in the series by Zurbarán s studio sent from Seville to the New World. This does not, however, mean that Zurbarán s studio was the only one to produce such works. Furthermore, the physical types and folds of the drapery are the same as those in two important canvases by Llanos, namely Saint John the Baptist before the Sanhedrin and The Calling of Saint Matthew (figs. 6 and 7) in Seville cathedral, both signed and dated 1668.
Fig.1
Figs. 2-5
Fig.6 Fig.7