Luis de Morales

Madonna and Child, by Luis de Morales. Prado Museum.

Luis de Morales (1512 - 9 May 1586) was a Spanish painter born in Badajoz, Extremadura. Known as "El Divino", most of his work was of religious subjects, including many representations of the Madonna and Child and the Passion.

Influenced, especially in his early work, by Raphael Sanzio and the fr school of Leonardo, he was called by his contemporaries "The Divine Morales", because of his skill and the shocking realism of his paintings, and because of the spirituality transmitted by all his work.

His work has been divided by critics into two periods, an early stage under the influence of Florentine artists such as Michelangelo and a more intense, more anatomically correct later period similar to German and Flemish renaissance painters.

Selected works

• La Virgen del Pajarito (Virgin of the Bird) (1546), kept in the church of San Agustín, in Madrid.
• La Piedad (Pietà) (1560), kept in Badajoz Cathedral.
• San Juan de Ribera (1564), in the Prado Museum, Madrid.
• Ecce Homo, in the Hispanic Society of America.
• La Piedad (Pietà), in the Prado Museum.
• Virgen de la leche (Breastfeeding Virgin), at Prado Museum.