"San Sebastián and San Roque". Antonio Vázquez (Valladolid, 1485-1563), around 1530.
Oil on panel.
Two male figures stand in the foreground, highlighted against a landscape background. The one on the left is Saint Sebastian, half-naked and tied to a tree, his body bowed; the one on the right is San Roque, dressed as a pilgrim, a dog with a bread in his mouth at his feet and an angel on the right with a tray of healing items for the sore on the saint's leg, which shows raising his clothes. Both saints appear with the most common iconography of their time: in the first case, the martyrdom of Diocletian's officer; in the second his attire, the dog that brought him food and the angel that provided cures for his thigh wound.
Antonio Vázquez was a Spanish Renaissance painter active in Valladolid and its surroundings, who stands out for his extensive production and for being the most requested and valued in his city and surroundings. The attribution of this table to the teacher is reasoned and documented by Isabel Mateo in her study, who relates it to one, very similar and on the same subject, preserved at the Wellcome Institute for History of Medicine, London, which she considers prior to the present for about fifteen years, despite the fact that all the known work of the painter dates to the 1530s due to the difficulty of establishing a clearer chronology due to the lack of works from his last stage. In addition to highlighting characteristic elements of Vázquez's style (faces, Saint Sebastian's ear, hair…), he compares this oil with other well-known works, such as the Virgin of the Crucifixion from the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid, an altarpiece dedicated to Saint Bernard with Christ who appeared in the London trade in 1993, that of the church of Calabanzos (Palencia), etc. And the great workshop of the painter stands out, in which his son and brother-in-law also worked, and which, except for a few examples, maintained a high level of quality, in addition to the slight Renaissance influence of the panel, which evokes the "four-century". and the scarce wealth of iconographic themes in the master's career, which has allowed the attribution of numerous works with some certainty."
· Size: 70x4x95 cms.
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