JUAN SANCHEZ COTAN

(1560 / 1627)

JUAN SANCHEZ COTAN Orgaz (Toledo) (1560) / Granada (1627) "Saint John the Baptist"

Oil on canvas Presented in an important 17th century Baroque frame made of carved and gilded wood. Bibliography: Angulo, D. and Pérez Sánchez, AE, "Toledo painting. First half of the 17th century", Madrid, 1972, p. 90, no. 148, plate 26. Sánchez Cotán was one of the most relevant figures of the Toledo school of painting. Although his most notable work is still lifes, he frequently painted religious themes. In September 1604 he took his profession as a lay brother at the Carthusian monastery in Granada, leaving important examples of his art in this and other convents of the same order; among which the Granada series of episodes from the history of the Carthusian order stands out. Another, no less important, part of his production is a type of easel paintings of a devotional nature, in which he represented isolated images of the Virgin and other saints. Within this group is this Saint John the Baptist, represented in the middle of a beautiful landscape, which was surely commissioned for a Carthusian monastery, as this saint was the first patron of the order. His style, derived from the painters of the Escorial school, is refined, with softened models and chromatic palettes in which soft and harmonious tones predominate, without stridency. Although its measurements are not listed, it seems that this painting is the one reproduced in the Angulo and Pérez Sánchez catalogue of 1972, which, at that time, was in the Simomsen collection in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a work derived, although with some variations, from the one he painted for the altarpiece of the Carthusian monastery in Granada and which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in that city. Measurements: 142 x 86 cm. Frame measurements: 162 x 105 cm.