_Luis de Morales_ (Spanish: 1509-1586).
Luis de Morales was born at Badajos, and is one of the most
native of Spanish artists. He did not resort to Italy, such
foreign influence as is discernible in him being rather that of
the Flemings; and the religious sanctity of his work won him
the surname of "the Divine." "His subjects, always devotional,
were," we are told, "mostly of the saddest, as the Saviour in
his hour of suffering, or dead in his mother's arms, or the
weeping Madonna. His object was to excite devotion through
images of pain, and to this end the forms are attenuated and
the faces disfigured by the marks of past or present anguish."
He was very largely commissioned by churches and convents,
and his fame spread over Spain. He was called to the court of
Philip II. in 1563, but was dismissed as soon as he had painted
one picture, and thereafter he fell into great poverty. He
had appeared at court, it is said, "in the style of a grand
_seigneur_" which seemed to the king and his courtiers absurd
in a mere painter, and was the cause of their disfavour. Some
years later, however, the king, learning of his poverty,
granted him a pension. In his earlier period, Morales painted
crowded compositions with numerous figures; in his later,
smaller pictures, such as the one before us.