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Our Lady of Good Counsel
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
This painting loosely and inventively depicts an actual chapel in the former Jesuit Imperial College in Madrid, which housed a Madonna and Child in gilded and painted wood, a focus of popular devotion. Pérez made temporary decorations for the Spanish court, none of which survive, but the fanciful architecture, curiously inverted obelisks, fruits and flowers, and pastel colors all stem from this side of his work. By representing a polychrome sculpture in two dimensions, Pérez further blurred boundaries between painting and sculpture. This intersection of the spiritual and the real worlds was important in Spanish art of the 1600s.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineOur Lady of Good Counsel, c. 1680. Bartolomé Pérez (Spanish, 1634–1693). Oil on copper; framed: 50 x 40 cm (19 11/16 x 15 3/4 in.); unframed: 37 x 26 cm (14 9/16 x 10 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 2012.5
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