JUAN SOREDA (Spain, 1506-1537)."Virgin and Child Jesus, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the

JUAN SOREDA (Spain, 1506-1537).
"Virgin and Child Jesus, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist".
Oil on panel.
Attached is a study by José Gómez Frechina.
Spanish frame of the 17th century.
Measurements: 65 x 51,5 cm. 85,5 x 72 cm.(frame).
Following the study carried out by the historian José Gómez Frechina, comparing his research with a large bibliography, we can affirm that this is an autograph and unpublished work by Juan Soreda. This devotional painting depicts the Virgin with the Infant Jesus, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist, offering the painter's most personal stylistic characteristics. It has close formal links with the altarpiece of Santa Librada in Sigüenza cathedral by the same artist, suggesting a date for this work in the late 1920s, i.e. in the mature phase of his production. The Virgin holds the naked Child in her arms and looks towards Saint Juanito, who is holding a reed cross and is preparing to kiss the foot of the Divine Infant in an affectionate manner. In a more secluded setting, his mother Saint Elizabeth, depicted as a woman with a weathered, angular face, covers her hair with a headdress. He gives an intimate character to the effigy of the divine figures, who occupy the entire painting, exquisitely characterising the affections with gestures and glances. On a technical level, the tonal gradation and the glazes suggesting intense contrasts of light should be emphasised. The painting has a certain Leonardesque echo that may reflect Soreda's knowledge of Yáñez de la Almedina's work. Gómez Frechina points to the stylistic similarity between the head of Saint Isabella and that of the Virgin in Soreda's panel of "Saint Thomas receiving the cincture of the Virgin" in the monastery of Santa María de Huerta (Soria). The first historiographical account of Juan Soreda's pictorial activity dates from 1899 when Manuel Pérez Villamil published an account of this painter - albeit under the incorrect name of Juan Pereda - in his publication "Estudios de Historia y Arte: la catedral de Sigüenza, erigida en el siglo XII" ("Studies in History and Art: Sigüenza Cathedral, erected in the 12th century"). Soreda was active in an important workshop in the diocese of Sigüenza and at the end of his life lived in El Burgo de Osma, where a Virgin and Child of his is preserved in the cathedral museum of the cathedral in Oaxaca. Soreda's pictorial universe reveals links with the work of Juan de Borgoña and Hispano-Flemish painting in Toledo, a certain knowledge of the new pictorial innovations from Italy, the analysis of works by Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina and the use of Raphaelesque prints in some of his compositions. The patronage of Bishop Fadrique de Portugal in Sigüenza was evident in the altarpiece of Santa Librada de Soreda, who undertook his pictorial work without previous iconographic testimonies with passages from the life of the Hispanic saint. Other works attributed to Juan Soreda include a Virgin and Child in the cathedral museum in El Burgo de Osma, an early Virgin and Child in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, several paintings in the main altarpiece of the parish church of San Pelayo in Olivares de Duero, three paintings in the monastery of Santa María de Huerta (Soria), and the Prophets and Sibyls in Santa María del Rey in Atienza. The present panel of the Virgin and Child, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist is the most recent and important addition to the Soredian corpus in terms of its quality and beauty. His work has been highlighted in recent decades, based on exhumed archival documentation, revealing one of the most interesting artists of the Renaissance in Spain, says Frechina.