Estimate

25.000 - 35.000

Session

22 April 2013

Hammer Price

Description

c. 1550
Oil on panel
118x50 cm

Category

Paintings

Additional Information

Provenance: Alpoim Calvão Collection

The painting now on sale is one of Contreiras three versions of The meeting at the golden door.Although this one is isolated from its original altarpiece about the other two original placements are known.

One of them was painted circa 1540 for the Igreja Paroquial de Santa Catarina and the other executed later for the central panel of the Conceptions triptych of the São Bento monastery in Cástris, near Évora.

Joaquim Caetano who is studying the production of this author tells us although the motif is not very much proper to variations Contreiras never follows the exact same model. Here Saint Joachim and Saint Anne are depicted praying with Joachims profile bearing long bear and gray hair, Anne is depicted with the characteristic oval-shaped feminine faces of Contreiras and behind Joachim. The arch of the golden door is placed aslant and reinforced by a buttress creating an angle at the center of the painting that enables the opening for the two perspective grounds with houses on the left side and with landscape at the right side where is depicted the additional scene of Joachims Annunciation. This arrangement enables an important panel depth despite the difficult proportion of the panel, very tall and narrow, and the simplicity of the theme which often tends for symmetry and monotony. The archs placement at the picture enables Contreiras to create on the central plan a crossing that organizes in the X shape all the composition creating two axes that cross at this point, one from Anne to the end of the landscape in which the color reproduces that of the Saints mantle and the other from Joachim to the house ground in warm shades.Vertically these two axes are cut by the line where the Virgin is suspended above a slim crescent and bright inside the luminous nimbus The fact that the figures depicts a much more fullbodied complexion and even the circumstance of not represented embraced in the Marian tradition points to an evolution of Contreiras work, later than the same theme in Santa Catarina, being probably a painting of the early 1550 decade.

For all that is an unavoidable production of this Portuguese renaissance artist and although decontextualized from its original place the picture stands on its own and will certainly reinforce any art collection.

Anísio Franco