003. Vicente Carducho

A PATRON INTERVENES
Celebrated for his treatise on painting, Carducho was also an accomplished painter and draftsman. This drawing is one of many preparatory sheets for a series of fifty-six paintings that the artist designed for the Charterhouse of El Paular. In the foreground, the prior Father Andrés is tortured by a device called la garrucha; the background reveals his subsequent murder by a mob. Squared for transfer to the oil sketch that preceded the final painting, the drawing bears an inscription by the patron indicating that the suspended figure should be larger and more centered. Carducho incorporated this correction into the finished canvas.