Estimate

25.000 - 30.000

Session 2

15 April 2021

Hammer Price

Description

Oil on panel
(restoration)

137x117 cm

Category

Paintings

Additional Information

SIMÃO RODRIGUES (Alcácer do Sal, ca. 1560 - Lisbon, 1629)

This particularly interesting Portuguese Mannerist work dating from ca. 1600, once a component of an ancient but now dismembered altar piece of obscure origin, constitutes a valuable testimony of a period of prolific serialized production, conventionally defined as “Counter-Maniera” (the Counter-Reformation Mannerism), being equally representative of the production of the most illustrious artist of the 16th to 17th century transition.
Portraying the Biblical scene of the Kiss of Judas that precedes Christ’s arrest, it includes, at the forefront of the composition, the dynamic subtopic of Saint Peter cutting off Malchus ear. Simão Rodrigues, the author of this painting was, as early as 1589, considered “one of the best painters in oil in these kingdoms” (hum dos milhores pimtores de imaginaria de olio que há nestes Reynos). Working also on frescoes and illuminated manuscripts, he will be praised by the highly demanding theoretical writer Felix da Costa Meesen who, in 1696 notes that Rodrigues “was a very talented man of highly productive capacity” (homem de raro engenho, e mui fasil no pintar), a characteristic evidenced by the excellent drafting qualities of this Kiss of Judas, inspired by Roman prototypes from the reigns of Gregory XIII and Sixtus V, which the artist knew from his training in the papal city.
The theme, repeated by the artist on one of the panels from the sacristy of Coimbra’s Old Cathedral (ca. 1607), today at the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro, as well as on two panels from his studio, one from the altar piece of Tancos Church of Mercy (ca. 1600) now at Santarém Dioceses Museum, and another from Torres Vedras church of Saint Mary’s at the Castle, is treated both with particular compositional elegance and didactic purpose, attentive to chiaroscuro details that are accentuated by the notturno atmosphere.
Rodrigues had most certainly seen first-hand the frescoes from the Oratorio del Gonfalone in Rome, which may have provided the inspiration for this particular composition. His artistic production follows in fact, the same models of the pittura senza tempo, of close Tridentine ties, particularly that of Roman artists such as Federico Zuccaro, Cesare Nebbia or Livio Agresti, without forgetting Pomerancio, and the lessons learned from the Portuguese artist Campelo that inspired various of Simão Rodrigues’s works.
It is this same late-Mannerism language, that dominated the Counter-Reformation imagery canons in the Jubilee years ca. 1600, that it is possible to perceive in this painting, so clearly attentive to the clarity of devotional narrative. As firstly highlighted by Adriano de Gusmão in his 1956 work “Simão Rodrigues e os seus colaboradores”, the most individualized works of this artist define a quality far above that of his contemporaries, as it is clearly patent in his Coimbra works (the Mount Carmel church sacristy and the city’s University chapel).
The artist managed a productive studio in the Parish of Socorro in Lisbon, which aggregated various participants, including the future royal painter Domingos Vieira Serrão (ca. 1565-1632), and various others whose names and production have been identified, a fact that drove many commissions completed in that context to suffer by repetitiveness of recipe and frailties of finish.
This is certainly not the case with the splendid portrayal of the Kiss of Judas that is undoubtedly the master’s own work. This painting is indeed a characteristic production of Rodrigues direct repertoire, defined by the figures robust posture (the soldiers’ depiction for instance, is repeated on other panels, such as those from the former altarpiece of Coimbra’s Santa Cruz church, dated 1611 (now at the Mount Carmel church sacristy in the same city), as well as by the strong sense of pathos, accentuated by the light and shadow compositional modelling. Also evidenced is the looseness of drawing in the very unique characteriz