Ramón Bayeu y Subías

RAMÓN BAYEU Y SUBÍAS (Zaragoza, 1746 - Aranjuez, Madrid, 1793).
"Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Work published in the catalog of the exhibition "Estampes de Sant Francesc de Borja", p. 133.
It preserves the frame of the period.
It has slight restorations.
Measurements: 167 x 110 cm; 177 x 118 cm (frame).
This devotional image presents the vision of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The scene presents the saint in the foreground with his face directed to Christ, whose bust starts from a golden break of glory located in the upper left zone. Dressed in a purple cloak and with the cross on his shoulders, the author thus confirms the suffering and martyrdom of Christ. Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was a Spanish religious, founder of the Society of Jesus, military man and poet. He grew up as a pupil of Juan Velázquez de Cuéllar, Chief Accountant of Castile, and therefore in direct contact with the court. He was thus educated in the mastery of arms, and was able to develop his love of reading. Wounded in combat in 1521, during his convalescence his religious readings made an impression on him, and Ignatius reconsidered his life, deciding to abandon military life for religious life. This desire is heightened by a vision of the Virgin with the Child Jesus, which provokes the definitive conversion of the soldier into a religious. From there he left with the conviction to travel to Jerusalem with the task of converting the non-Christians in the Holy Land. Later he studied in Alcalá de Henares, Salamanca and Paris, and finally founded the Society of Jesus in 1534. He died in 1556, due to illness, in his cell at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome.
Spanish painter, designer and draftsman, younger brother of Francisco and the Carthusian Manuel, he received his first pictorial teachings in the workshops of Juan Andrés Merklein and José Luzán Martínez. In 1764 he moved to Madrid, where he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where he received the first prize in painting. In 1780 he accepted the commission to paint the three vaults of the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza, for which he would interpret the themes Regina Virginum, Regina Patriarcharum and Regina Confesorum. In 1786 he was appointed, together with his brother-in-law Francisco de Goya, official painter of the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara in Madrid. In 1787 he painted three canvases with the "Virgin with St. Francis and St. Anthony", "St. Scholastica" and "St. Benedict" for the altars of the church of the monastery of Santa Ana in Valladolid. In 1789 he painted the canvas of "Nuestra Señora del Rosario" for the Cathedral of Segovia and obtained the title of painter of designs for fabrics. Two years later, on July 22, 1791, Charles IV granted him the coveted position of chamber painter. From his activity as an engraver, a technique that he cultivated in addition to drawing and painting, a copy of "La Sagrada Familia con San Juan Bautista" is preserved in the Calcografía Nacional in Madrid.