Saint Nicholas of Bari

One of the venerated saints in the city of Madrid was Saint Nicholas of Bari. It is precisely within the devotional context of this saint that this drawing by Vicente Carducho should be studied. In the drawing, Saint Nicholas appears full-length, dressed in pontifical vestments and displaying all the elements of his position as ecclesiastical dignitary: the chasuble, the staff and the mitre. At his feet, one of the most repeated episodes of his life is depicted. This episode represents three nude children getting out of a wooden tub. Interestingly, this is an apocryphal passage that has been very popular since ancient times.

From a technical point of view, the drawing is consistent with the master’s usual style. After an initial composition in black pencil, the artist worked on the shadows with the brush and brown wash, leaving the white of the paper for the illuminated areas. The greater or lesser intensity of the wash, applied with great skill, allowed him to create strong backlighting in the area of the face and the shadow cast by the saint’s back. Once these techniques were implemented, he again used black pencil to trace the outlines of the figures in order to highlight the white lead. This was a material that he also employed – using a very fine brush – to draw the delicate details of Saint Nicholas’ mitre. These features are among the most outstanding characteristics of this drawing. This meticulous attention to detail is evident in other sketches by the artist, namely The Apparition of Christ and the Virgin to Saint Augustine in the National Library, which allows the Prado’s page to be dated during the final years of his career. Likewise, the drawing is very similar to the series of the Greats of the church; both in terms of technique and of format and dimensions, which contributes to the consideration of all these works as contemporary.

Finally, there is no known record of any other representations of Saint Nicholas of Bari produced by Vicente Carducho, nor is there any documentary information or old descriptions of any painting by his hand, even as a commission. The artist may well have used the small illustration on the cover of the Vita by San Nicolás de Beatillo or one of the prints of that period, including those by Antonius Wierix on a composition by Maarten de Vos. It is also worth noting that Carducho repeated the model of Saint Nicholas of Bari, with few variations, to compose the painting of Saint Blaise. This painting is preserved in the chapel of San José in the cathedral of Seville.

Pascual Chenel, Á.; Rodríguez Rebollo, A., Vicente Carducho. Dibujos Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España - Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2015, p.166-168 n.28