School Of Madrid (c. 1700) - Our Lady Of Consolation, Private Devotion Panel

- Oil on wood panel. Exquisite miniature oil painting technique. Custom-made bronze frame. - The figure of Manuel Pérez de la Puente perfectly illustrates the high-ranking court officials who orchestrated the transition between Habsburg rule and the new Bourbon regime. Born into an old noble line from Ezcaray (La Rioja), his career at the court of Madrid was marked by the accumulation of honors and positions of trust, notably his appointment as a member of the Court of Accounts of Castile and his role as Privy Councillor to Philip V, positions he held concurrently with the prestigious habit of Knight of the Order of Santiago. Beyond his public role, recent historical research has highlighted his role as a patron of the arts. Pérez de la Puente commissioned a work of exceptional importance for his private oratory: the portrait of Our Lady of Sorrows. This devotion, imbued with the pious nuances characteristic of late Spanish Baroque, became the cornerstone of his spiritual life. The image was not merely a decorative object, but an object of personal devotion that accompanied the councilor until his final days, reflecting the tendency of the enlightened nobility to combine administrative rigor with a deep and traditional Marian piety. Don Manuel's final fate was sealed by his testamentary provisions, analyzed with documentary rigor by José Miguel de Mayoralgo y Lodo (Count of Acevedos). According to data published in his 2017 research on the necrology of the Madrid nobility, Pérez de la Puente died in 1766. He wished to be buried in the Convent of San José in Madrid (Discalced Carmelites), an institution that remains today an emblem of the capital's religious heritage. The originality of this burial lies in the symbolic arrangement desired by the deceased: he asked to rest beside the image of Our Lady of Sorrows, the painting he himself had commissioned and venerated. This posthumous union between the donor and the sacred image represents one of the last manifestations of the spirit of the chapel's "founders" in the Bourbon capital, where the salvation of the soul was closely linked to physical proximity to the divinity depicted in the painting. - Panel dimensions: 15.5 x 21 cm - Bronze frame dimensions: 27.5 x 33 cm