The Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra offers you this week a new guided tour of a particular artwork from the exhibition “INFLUENCERS in Art. From Van Goyen to Pop Art“, which you can listen to from home.
Today, the Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra invites you to discover ” The Rest one the Escape to Egypt “, by the artist Francisco Antolínez y Ochoa, part of the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.
Born in Seville in 1644 and died in Madrid in 1700, Francisco Antolínez is one of the privileged witnesses of what is known today as the Spanish Golden Age. Practising the profession of lawyer in parallel with that of painter, he began his training in Seville, where he discovered the work and apprenticeship of the great Bartolomé Murillo, who would profoundly influence his creative work, before leaving to exercise his talents in the Spanish capital, Madrid.
His work, mainly illustrating Christian themes from the New Testament and the Gospels, is in keeping with the themes of his time, especially regarding to the importance that the Virgin Mary and Joseph, the two protagonists of the work we are presenting to you today, gained in worship.
The artist’s style, characterised by its modernity, places the holy figures in a setting that generally combines landscape and architecture. Working with a dynamic touch, Antolínez pays special attention to the work of colour and light effects from the Flemish and Italian influences that enriched seventeenth-century Spain.
Although the only signed work by this artist still too little known is “The Adoration of the Magi“, 1678, from the Cathedral of Seville, Francisco Antolínez’s particular painting, which is on the border between modernity and classicism, allows us to attribute to him, without any doubt, the work ” The Rest one the Escape to Egypt “.
