Getty Acquires Major Painting by Luis de Morales

The J. Paul Getty Museum has acquired Christ Carrying the Cross, a 16th-century painting by Spanish Renaissance painter Luis de Morales (1509-1586). After an extensive conservation treatment, the painting will go on view May 1, 2025 in the Getty Center Museum’s North Pavilion gallery 205.

“Referred to as ‘El Divino’ by early sources, Luis de Morales’s devotional paintings are the most intense expression of the salvational trauma that religious paintings were intended to convey,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “The exquisite detailing of Christ’s features, hair, tears, and bloodstained forehead commend this as a major masterpiece of 16th-century Spanish painting, and a powerful proclamation of the Catholic faith as espoused by the great Spanish mystics.”

Often compared to his contemporary El Greco, Luis de Morales helped shape the status of Spanish art in the age of the Counter-Reformation. The painting shows Christ at half length, emerging from a stark black background in a dark red robe. He carries the cross on his left shoulder with his elongated hands tightly clutching the beam, illustrating the extensive weight of the load he bears. With an expression of pain, his eyelids appear heavy as tears fall down his cheeks. His lips are slightly parted as if crying out in anguish and his forehead is marked with piercings and crimson droplets of blood that indicate where the crown of thorns once rested.

“Fully autographed works by Luis de Morales rarely appear on the market,” says Davide Gasparotto, senior curator of paintings at the Getty Museum. “This sublimely expressive painting represents a great opportunity to enrich our collection with a compelling work by of one of the defining protagonists of 16th-century Spanish art.”

When the painting arrived at Getty, associate conservator Kari Rayner undertook conservation treatment to address a multitude of issues. She first removed dark, discolored varnish from the surface. The most difficult part of the treatment was tackling an enlargement of the painting that was likely carried out in the 18th century. The historic expansion involved nailing wood strips around the perimeter of the original panel and painting them to extend the composition. To disguise this alteration, the edges of the original artwork were painted over. Under a microscope, Rayner used a scalpel and different solvent-containing gels to painstakingly remove non-original oil paint that had become tightly bound with the original oil paint over time. Since removing the wood strips would risk further damage to the original paint layer, they were left in place, and a new period-appropriate frame was fabricated to hide the extensions.

“In addition to painting over the original, the previous expansion took some liberties with the image, extending Christ’s cross and changing the folds of his robe.” says Rayner. “Removing the non-original paint was a lengthy and challenging process, but it has brought the painting closer to how the artist originally intended the artwork to appear.”

Ongoing scientific analysis is revealing details about the painting that are helping art historians and conservators better understand the artist’s technique and materials he employed. This includes the pigments used, such as a copper-based blue incorporated into a lower paint layer under Christ’s red robe. It is also advancing understanding of how this painting relates to other versions of the same subject by the artist.

The subject of Christ carrying the cross has a long tradition in Christian art. The development of this scene can be documented in Italian art at the beginning of the 16th century, particularly in Venice, where major examples were executed by artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto. Luis de Morales drew inspiration from a famous prototype by Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo which was commissioned by don Fernando de Silva, 4th Count of Cifuentes, when he was posted Spanish ambassador in Rome.

At Getty, the painting by Morales joins a small but refined contingent of Spanish works by renown masters like El Greco, Murillo, Valdés Leal, Vicente López, Goya, and Sorolla.