Juan Padilla

JUAN PADILLA Y LARA (Jerez de la Frontera, 1906 - 1980).
"Virgin with Child and border of flowers".
Oil on canvas.
Signed.
Measurements: 92 x 73 cm; 101 x 82 cm (frame).
The painter offers us a scene of very long tradition in the Christian West, the Virgin Mary seated, embracing in her lap Jesus child. The artist concentrates on the two characters, although he contextualizes the scene in an interior with an open landscape sale on the right side. The Virgin and Child are placed in profile with respect to the viewer, united in a tender embrace. The artist especially manages to convey the naturalness of the gesture of the child, who adopts a casual and very natural posture, looking at the fruit that his mother holds. Since the end of the Middle Ages, artists insisted on representing, in an increasingly intense way, the bond of affection that united Christ with his Mother and the close relationship between them.
Juan Padilla y Lara was a painter who combined his artistic work with teaching at the School of Applied Arts and Crafts in his hometown, where he himself had begun his pictorial training. From 1955 onwards, he extended his studies at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría (Seville), obtaining the title of Professor of Drawing in 1960. He stood out, above all, for his still lifes and still lifes (in which the grape, shown with an almost photographic precision, and the works of the field related to this fruit, had a frequent protagonism). His son, Juan Padilla Pardo, is another outstanding artist, who continues the family saga and became director of the same School of Applied Arts and Crafts.