Ascension of Elijah

religious

Valdés went back to Córdoba in 1654 for a final two-year stay and began one of his greatest creations, the altarpiece for the church of the Shod Carmelites. This work eventually would comprise twelve pictures and take three years to finish (two canvases are dated 1658). One reason for the delay might have been the painter's decision to leave Córdoba and settle permanently in Seville.

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About the Artist

Juan de Valdés Leal

1622 – 1690

Spanish painter and engraver, born in Seville, where he worked from 1656 after some early years in Cordova. With Murillo he helped to found an academy of painting there in 1660, and after Murillo's death in 1682 he was the leading artist in the city. Like Murillo, he was primarily a religious painter, but he was very different in style and approach. He had a penchant for macabre or grotesque subject-matter, and his style is characterized by feverish excitability, with a vivid sense of movement, brilliant colouring, and dramatic lighting. His most remarkable works are two large Allegories of Death (commissioned 1672) in the Hospital de la Caridad, Seville. He also polychromed Roldán 's great altarpiece in the Caridad.

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