Juan de Espinal
Johannes der Täufer, um 1780
Juan de Espinal, one of the best pupils of Domingo Martínez, became Martínez's son-in-law in 1734, and ultimately inherited his workshop organization with its large collection of drawings, models, and graphics. Moreover, in 1775, at the first meeting of the Academia de las Tres Nobles Artes sponsored by Francisco de Bruna, he was named its first director, an office he held until his death. In his inventory, Echeverría identified him as such under no. 8 and a second drawing no. 10: “By D. Juan de Espinar; native of Seville and director of its Academy,” and “10 ... no. 2: By the said Espinar.”
In technique, the drawing is close to those of Juan de Valdés Leal. The repeated pencil lines that here form the right upper arm are similar, as is the subsequent overlay of a brush drawing (compare with inv. no. 38662, cat. no. 143). In the Hamburg collection it is possible to construct a teacher-pupil line that begins with Valdés Leal, passes through his son Lucas Valdés to Domingo Martínez, and finally ends with Espinal.
The staff and the sacrificial lamb, but even more clearly the costly cloak and the man's age, identify him as Saint Joachim, whose offering was rejected by the high priest because he and his wife were childless. After he withdrew to the desert for forty days of fasting and penance, an angel appeared to both him and his wife, announcing to them the birth of a child, Mary. In the painting The Holy Family in Seville's Palacio Arzobispal,' Joachim does not hold the lamb in his arms, yet the similarities to the Joachim of the present drawing confirm an extremely close relationship. The facial expression (above all owing to the identical shadow beneath the eyes), the nose, the beard, the headdress, the robe, the staff, and the shoes-all these identical details confirm the authorship of Espinal. Because of the close connection between the drawing and the painting, Alfonso Pérez Sánchez dated the drawing to 1777-81, when the painting is presumed to have been produced.
Jens Hoffmann-Samland
1 Oil on canvas, 86 5/x 64 15/16 in. (220 x 165 cm), see Perales Piqueres 1981, pl. V. Pérez Sánchez already pointed out the close relationship between the figure of Saint Joachim and the present drawing in Pérez Sánchez (dir.) 1995, 290.