MORALES, LUIS de, called EL DIVINO. - Spanish painter, b. at Badajoz around 1500 and d. there on 9 May 1586. He was among the most active painters of his time.

Among his numerous works, scattered through the various museums of the world, as well as in Spanish museums and churches, one may recall the Ecce Homo in the cathedral of Seville; Christ with the Cross, the Madonna and Child with St. Joachim and St. Anne (dated 1546) in the church of the Conception at Badajoz; a Christ and a Desolate Virgin in the Museum of Toledo; Christ at the Column in the church of St. Isidore the Royal in Madrid; the Pietà, the Virgin and Child, the Annunciation in the Prado Museum; the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin with the Son in the Museum of Valladolid.

An artist of a profound mystical and pathetic feeling, he reveals in his art Italian influences, especially Lombard ones in the characteristic sfumato of his works, and those of the Flemish primitives in the coloring and in the elongation of his melancholy figures, at times a little cloying, but nonetheless typical products of Spanish religiosity.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: A. L. Mayer, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, XXV (1931), pp. 116-17; J. de Coutrassa, Historia del arte hispánico, III, Barcelona-Buenos Aires 1940, pp. 256, 270, 352 and 353; A. Rodriguez-Morino, El Divino M. en Portugal, in Boletim dos Museus Nacionais de Arte antiga, 3 (1944), nos. 9-10, pp. 19-33, with bibl.

Gilberto Ronci

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Morales, Luis de, called El Divino

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