Rustic Allegory

Nothwithstanding his long life, Joaquín Valverde painted relatively few pictures, and some of them – like this one – have remained practically unknown. Alegoría campestre, is not even mentioned by the artists and scholars who knew the painter, despite its excellent attributes and large size. Nothing is known about the origin of the commission except that it was a wall painting for a house in the residential district of El Viso in Madrid, which would explain the bucolic nature of the subject portrayed.

Valverde’s vocation for doing murals was aimed at depicting daily events in a noble and grandiose manner, and determined his initial works. It was first seen when he was in contact with Quattrocento painting in Italy (the country where he would live from March 1922 to October 1928, thanks to an allowance from the Spanish Academy in Rome after his five years of studies at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts), which decisively influenced his style.