The Flagellation of Christ
XVII century.Not on display
Juan de Valdés Leal was one of the founders of the Sevillian drawing school in 1660 together with Murillo, Herrera the Younger and Cornelis Schut, among other artists. Thanks to Palomino, who wrote a treatise on him in the early 1670s in Córdoba, he was known to be very fond of drawing but was not limited to sketches and outlines for works. During his trip to Madrid in 1664, he also attended one of the academies that existed in the city at the time in order to draw live models. This technique was also performed in the academy founded in the Andalusian capital.
Lefort identified this as a preparatory drawing for the canvas of the same subject that Ceán cites as being in the Cathedral of Seville and of which there is no trace today. It is skilfully executed by employing two types of pencil line: a fine one to trace the outline of all the figures and architectural elements, and a thicker one to emphasise the lines of the main scene. On the other hand, the brush was the medium of choice for drawing much of the architectural scenery as well as for applying the greyish wash in the areas that required shading.
The drawing is attached on top of a second support on which a framing line has been traced in brown ink. This effect can be observed in other drawings from the collection of Fernández Durán. The sheet of the drawing is trimmed on every side. This is a characteristic of the majority of works belonging to Ceán, but also in other collections from that time, such as that of Jovellanos cousins or the 2nd Count of Águila, in which there were also examples of framing lines. At the same time, this practice was already common for years in foreign collections, such as the sketchbook created by Padre Sebastiano Resta.
Hidalgo Caldas, Beatriz, "El coleccionismo ilustrado de dibujos en Sevilla y Madrid durante el último tercio del siglo XVIII y comienzos del XIX a la luz de la colección de Ceán Bermúdez". Ceán Bermúdez. Historiador del arte y coleccionista ilustrado, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2016, p.309-339 [324]
