Following models of Titian. Spanish school, 18th century.

After models by TIZIANO (Pieve di Cadore, Belluno, Veneto, ca. 1477/1490 - Venice, 1576);Spanish school, 18th century."The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence".Oil on copper.It presents repainting.Measurements: 51 x 36 cm; 73 x 53 cm (frame).The present work, although executed in Spain during the 18th century, was originally conceived by Titian from 1548 to 1559 and is enceunta in the Escorial Monastery in Madrid.The painting on copper depicts the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. The work shows the protagonist on the grill at the moment when the martyrdom begins, a characteristic feature of the Baroque style that seeks to enhance the drama of the scenes. The way in which the grill has been depicted indicates the quality of the author, as it initiates a marked diagonal that helps to configure the space of a scene completely populated with characters, just as Titian did almost two centuries earlier. A deacon born in Aragon, near Huesca, and martyred in Rome in 258, his "Legendary Acts" narrate that Saint Lawrence, out of humility, washed the feet of Christians, cured a widow of a headache and gave sight to a blind man through baptism. Three days after the martyrdom of Pope Sixtus II, who had ordained him deacon and entrusted him with the treasure of the Church, he was arrested and ordered to hand over these riches. But there was nothing left of it, as Lorenzo had distributed it to the poor. Furious at seeing his greed frustrated, the emperor Decius ordered him to be flogged with rods, his ribs burned with a red-hot iron and, finally, to be stretched out naked on a gridiron over a mantle of coals. Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of the poor, among whom he distributed the treasures of the Church. He was also adopted as patron saint of numerous guilds and trades.Titian Vecellio was an Italian Renaissance painter and one of the greatest exponents of the Venetian school, which explains his use of bright, luminous colours, as well as his loose brushstrokes and innate chromatic moulding. He was a pupil of Giovanni Bellini (Venice, ca. 1433-1516), an Italian painter of the Fourteenth century, renowned both for his sumptuous colouring and for his landscapes and fluid atmospheres. The death of the leading established artists of the day (Giorgione and his own master, Bellini) and the transfers of Sebastiano del Piombo and Lorenzo Lotto to Rome and Bergamo respectively left Titian without rivals, at which point he began his period of expansion in which the Italian freed himself from the hermetic canons learned during his youth and began to produce the works that would establish him as a key painter in the history of European art: court portraits for the Duke of Ferrara Alfonso I of Este and his work on the high altar of the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. In 1521 Titian's workshop began to play an important role, receiving numerous commissions such as The Martyrdom of Saint Peter in Verona (1530), the year in which the artist's period of consolidation began and in which he cultivated an increasingly dramatic style, increasing his good relations with the court of Mantua, which would lead to his consecration as a portraitist, producing works such as Charles V on Horseback in Mülberg (1548). In his later years the Italian artist became increasingly self-critical, producing completely perfectionist works such as Danae Receiving the Golden Rain (1553) and working for Philip II, a monarch with whom he maintained a close artistic relationship, producing numerous royal portraits.