Spanish school of the XVIII century.

Spanish school of the XVIII century.
"San Bruno".
Oil on canvas.
It presents losses of polychrome and generalized breaks.
Measurements: 79 x 58 cm.

In this work we see San Bruno dressed as a Carthusian, with his austere white habit and, next to him, the mitre and the crosier. He appears kneeling on the floor, before a lectern with the open Gospels. He joins his hands in a prayerful attitude and raises his gaze to heaven. Stylistically, the canvas is dominated by the influence of Italian Baroque aesthetics, which can be seen in the rhetoric of the gesture and in the marked chiaroscuro.

Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030-1101) was a German monk, founder of the contemplative religious order of the Carthusians. During his youth he was a canon in Cologne, and studied secular and theological letters. Later he went to Reims, in France, to study theology, and became a professor in 1057. In this city he became director of teaching, and among his students was Eudes of Chatillon, the future Pope Urban II. He later opted for the life of a hermit, under the direction of Robert of Molesmes. Bishop Hugo of Grenoble gave him the mountainous area of the Charterhouse, where he built an oratory surrounded by cells, which would give rise to the Carthusian order in 1084. Called to Rome some time later, he helped in the reform of Urban II. However, he preferred the contemplative life, so he returned to solitude, resigning the archbishopric of Reggio. He then retired to the Carthusian monastery of La Torre, in Calabria, where he lived in solitude with a few lay people and some clerics, and there he died and was buried.