San Bruno by Fray Juan Sánchez Cotán, Oil on Panel

Oil on panel of San Bruno with dimensions including frame 38 x 32 cm, without frame 24 x 18 cm, unpublished work painted on walnut wood, photographs of comparisons with other works by the author that were painted in Granada.

Juan Sánchez Cotán arrived in Granada after leaving his previous life in Toledo and entering the Carthusian monastery in the early 17th century. In Granada, he developed the most spiritual and silent phase of his painting, marked by a profound monastic austerity and an almost mystical observation of reality.

During his years in the Carthusian monastery of Granada, Sánchez Cotán transformed his style: compositions became more severe, backgrounds darker, and figures acquired a contemplative intensity that anticipates Spanish Baroque naturalism. Although he continued to create some still lifes, he was especially recognized for his large religious cycles intended for convents and monasteries in Granada.

The light in his Granada paintings becomes an essential element. It illuminates faces, habits, and objects with an almost supernatural clarity, creating scenes of recollection and silence. His saints and Carthusians appear isolated, immersed in prayer, with a contained and deeply human emotion.

Sánchez Cotán's Granada phase represents the perfect union of art and spirituality. In it, the painter abandoned the worldly refinement of his early years to seek a beauty based on simplicity, order, and inner contemplation, becoming one of the most singular figures in Spanish painting of the Golden Age.