Luis Taberner

LUIS TABERNER Y MONTALVO (Madrid, 1844-1900)
Untitled.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has flaws in the pictorial surface.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 57,5 x 59,5 cm.
Oil on canvas in which the artist shows a woman riding a chariot pulled by lions. Due to this iconography, she can be identified as the Goddess Cybele. Cybele was originally a Phrygian goddess, the goddess of Mother Earth, worshipped since Neolithic times in the region of Anatolia. She was the personification of the fertile earth, a goddess of caves and mountains, walls and fortresses, of nature and animals. Her Roman equivalent was Magna Mater or Great Mother. She is a deity of life, death and resurrection. Her consort, whose cult was introduced later, was Atis. She is one of the main goddesses of ancient Near Eastern cultures. In Greek mythology she is also known as Damia.
According to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Luis Taberner y Montalvo "was a Spanish painter, who studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid and regularly attended the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts, where he presented, in 1871, the work The propagandist. He was also present at the Horticultural Exhibition of Madrid in 1881 with the painting entitled Unas orzas. A genre painter and skilled portraitist, his works include the Portrait of King Alfonso XII and those of Emilio Arrieta, Francisco A. Barbieri, Manuel Fernández Caballero and Francisco López Dóriga y Bustamante. He also practiced decorative painting, of which numerous oil sketches are preserved".