Madonna with the Child

religious

We know very little about Morales. He appears never to have left Spain, and the influence of Italian Mannerism reached him only through the work of Pedro de Campana, an artist of Flemish origin. Virgin and Child is one of his most characteristic pictures, and there are several variants.

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About the Artist

Luis de Morales

1520 – 1586

Spanish painter. He worked for most of his life in Badajoz, a town on the Portuguese border, and his style-formed away from the influence of the court or great religious and artistic centres such as Seville - is highly distinctive. His pictures are usually fairly small and he concentrated on devotional images. He painted numerous versions of the Virgin and Child, sometimes with the infant St John, and touching visions inspired by the theme Ecce Homo, which are among his most popular works. The piety of his work has earned him the nickname 'El Divino'. His style owes something to Netherlandish art, but his misty modelling seems to derive more from Leonardo da Vinci.

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