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Are you interested in this item? This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. Few documented data can be found regarding the biography of this painter. Palomino, supposing he was the brother of the Madrid painter José Antolínez, called him Francisco Ochoa de Meruelo y Antolinez. Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez corrected his name, in view of two signatures of the painter. He noted that, after studying law in Seville, he learned painting at Murillo’s school and attended the academy established at the “Lonja” house of the city, where his presence is reported in 1672. That same year he must have moved to Madrid to meet José Antolínez, whom Ceán believed to be his uncle, but it is likely that after his death he returned for some time to Seville. He settled in Madrid for good and after being widowed, he took the clerical habits, intending to be ordained priest without success.
Antolínez's artistic corpus was fixed from one single signed work: La adoración de los pastores, exhibited at the Chapel of Scalas at the Cathedral of Seville, dated 1678.3 The canvas is part of a series of six biblical scenes that Ceán Bermúdez had already attributed to Antolínez in his Descripción artística de la catedral de Sevilla, published in 1804, and his attribution could be ratified in 1982 when the signature appeared after a clean-up.4 Many other series had previously been attributed to him, if we count only on the data provided by Palomino, and a few more have been incorporated into his catalogue after the appearance of his signature on the Sevillian canvas, since they had similar features. In all cases they are large series in small or medium format representing subject matters taken from the Old Testament (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and, to a greater extent, from the New one, sometimes resorting to the Apocryphal Gospels to complete cycles dedicated to Our Lady’s or Christ’s life.
His landscapes are influenced by Ignacio de Iriarte’s Flemish style and Matías de Torres’ architectural backgrounds. His technique shows a short, frayed brushstroke that in some way recalls that of Valdés Leal. On the other hand, small figures of a murillesque character populate his landscapes. They show remarkable differences and loss of quality even on the same canvas, which often reveal a mechanical and hasty work, intended for its rapid sale in easy markets, as Palomino suggested.
Among the series attributed to him, in addition to the aforementioned one at Seville’s Cathedral and the many works which are in private collections, we can name the series about the life of the Virgin which is kept at the Prado Museum (La presentación de la Virgen, La anunciación, Los desposorios de la Virgen, La Natividad, La adoración de los reyes and La huida a Egipto) etc.
It comes with a certificate by Professor Diddie, a world eminence about him and other artists of the period.
The frame is a gift from the gallery thus it cannot be subject to any claim. 66853529
