To celebrate Christmas, for the third year running the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson is displaying a work related to the Nativity cycle. This year’s piece is a miniature by Luis Meléndez that joined the Masaveu Collection in 1999.

Luis Egidio Meléndez de Ribera (Naples, 1716–Madrid, 1780) is a painter known chiefly for his extensive production of still lifes, whose superb quality can be seen in the exhibition Masaveu Collection. Object and Nature. Still Life and Flower Paintings of the 17th to 18th Centuries. Another, no less interesting side of his output, stemming from a family tradition begun by his father Francisco Antonio Meléndez (Oviedo, 1682–Madrid, 1758), is his miniatures and illustrations of liturgical books – especially those commissioned by Ferdinand VI for the Royal Chapel choir books, which he worked on between 1756 and 1758. 

Like its companion piece executed in oil on copper on the same subject, this miniature was painted in 1768 for the oratory of the Prince of Asturias, the future Charles IV. It is an extremely refined work depicting a very popular iconography that was particularly suitable as a private image of spiritual inspiration for the future monarch. It shows the Holy Family with Saints Joaquim and Anne in a framed, classical composition in which the Virgin is positioned on the axis of symmetry, lovingly holding the Child on her lap. Jesus stretches out his arms to Saint Anne, who reaches out her right arm as if to receive him. Behind her is Saint Joaquim, gazing downwards with a kindly gesture. Saint Joseph, standing on the right, leans towards the Virgin. He bears a flowering staff and the book of Isaiah, from which he reads chapter LIII – containing the prophecy of the Passion of Christ – using his finger to guide him. The composition is crowned by the dove of the Holy Spirit among cherubs’ heads and clouds. The wicker basket of cloths framing the scene on the lower left gives it a familiar, everyday quality. 

The figures are monumentally and solidly constructed by means of intense tonal gradations using a painstaking stippling technique that is especially visible in Saint Joaquim and also lends the flesh tones a luminous vibrancy. Particularly notable among the colours employed is ultramarine, the densest and most highly appreciated blue pigment, which is reserved for the Virgin’s mantle. All the figures are placed on a step, above a floor with large tiles that further heighten the perspective. The artist’s signature is proudly displayed on it, rendered in painstaking strokes: ‘Ludovs. Menendez inv. et pinxit ad Dei honorem ac Virgin. matris ann. 1768.’