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Lot Essay
The attribution to José Antolínez, made by Soria in 1956, has been accepted by all later writers. The composition and in particular the figure of Christ, recall Ribera’s altarpiece of 1643 for the Monastery of S. Pascual in Madrid, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy.
According to the 1992 sale catalogue, a 19th-century inscription on a piece of paper formerly fixed to the reverse reads ‘Purchased by order of and through the great influence which Louis Philippe King of the French possessed with the Spanish Court—out of a Monastery near Seville where it had never been removed since it was Philippe’s Spanish Gallery’. This inscription is printed verbatim in a cutting (also formerly attached to the reverse) from the catalogue of a sale or exhibition in which the painting featured as number 96, attributed to Murillo. The present work does match the description of a picture exhibited in the Galerie Espagnole of Louis Philippe as the work of Francisco Antolínez y Sarabia (see Baticle and Marinas, loc. cit.). While Soria accepted this provenance, Angulo expressed doubts, pointing out that a rival candidate is in the Miguel Aramburu Collection in Cadiz. Baticle and Marinas confuse the issue by identifying the present work as the ex-Louis Philippe picture later sold as Murillo in the Thomas Townend estate sale, Christie’s, 14 July 1883, lot 73; that picture is in fact the Murillo altarpiece now in the Art Institute of Chicago (their no. 162).
According to the 1992 sale catalogue, a 19th-century inscription on a piece of paper formerly fixed to the reverse reads ‘Purchased by order of and through the great influence which Louis Philippe King of the French possessed with the Spanish Court—out of a Monastery near Seville where it had never been removed since it was Philippe’s Spanish Gallery’. This inscription is printed verbatim in a cutting (also formerly attached to the reverse) from the catalogue of a sale or exhibition in which the painting featured as number 96, attributed to Murillo. The present work does match the description of a picture exhibited in the Galerie Espagnole of Louis Philippe as the work of Francisco Antolínez y Sarabia (see Baticle and Marinas, loc. cit.). While Soria accepted this provenance, Angulo expressed doubts, pointing out that a rival candidate is in the Miguel Aramburu Collection in Cadiz. Baticle and Marinas confuse the issue by identifying the present work as the ex-Louis Philippe picture later sold as Murillo in the Thomas Townend estate sale, Christie’s, 14 July 1883, lot 73; that picture is in fact the Murillo altarpiece now in the Art Institute of Chicago (their no. 162).