In 1785, Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819) received a new commission from Banco Nacional de San Carlos, which needed a painting to preside over the oratory of its headquarters in Calle de la Luna. At the same time, on the main floor of the palace rented from the Count of Sástago, a chapel was to be set up “[…] in order that the obligation of attending mass should not distract these individuals from the operations to which they owe their dedication, as would surely happen if they had to attend mass off the premises.” Although the chapel was not opened for worship until the end of 1786, the artist had already finished his painting some time beforehand, as Maella was paid the sum of 7,140 reales on 13 February of that year for the “[…] cost of the picture of Saint Charles, painted by order of the Directors.” The successive inventories of the institution show that it was during the first years of the reign of Ferdinand VII that the picture was removed from its original site and hung instead in the Directorate. Because of the closely restricted access this entailed, together with the picture’s transfer from one to another of the institution’s buildings, there was no reference to it in a publication until 1959, when Félix Luis Baldasano y de Llanos mentioned it in his book El edificio del Banco de España.

Indeed, the only contemporary mention of this painting located so far is to be found in a biography of Mariano Maella written by Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez in 1797-99, but left in manuscript form and therefore not included in his celebrated Diccionario Histórico de los más ilustres Profesores de las Bellas Artes en España of 1800. Among Maella’s public commissions, the text states, he created a work for the “[…] national Bank: the picture on the altar of its chapel, which represents Saint Charles administering the viaticum to the dying plague victims of Milan.” The cult of this saint was not very widespread in Spain under the Habsburgs, and it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the monarchs encouraged the veneration of their own titular saint. Maella had already worked on the iconography of Saint Charles Borromeo in a picture he painted in 1781 for one of the altars of the Hospital General in Madrid. Here the saint was shown kneeling to embrace the crucifix, while the scene of the viaticum was relegated to the background. Some time later, however, this Court Painter decided in the painting for the oratory of Banco de San Carlos to show only the episode from the plague of 1576 in Milan. As Manuela Mena has pointed out, the most direct referent for this composition is the canvas by Pietro da Cortona at the church of San Carlo ai Catinari, which the Valencian artist could have seen in person during his stay as a grant holder in Rome, or perhaps knew through a print like the one by Johann Jakob Frey.

The society of the Ancien Régime was sadly familiar with the devastation caused by epidemics. Indeed, references to outbreaks of plague in every corner of the world, from Mexico to Dalmatia or Tunis, are continual in the Madrid press on dates concurrent with Maella’s commission. The image of the saint is undoubtedly based on his vera effigies, whilst the ashen tone of the skin of his face, now even more evident after a recent restoration, was no doubt intended to evoke the severe discipline imposed on himself by Saint Charles Borromeo during the plague in Milan: “[…] As if the Cardinal Saint were the greatest sinner of his people, he began to live with greater rigour and austerity, praying continually for the Lord to take pity on his beloved subjects. He fasted every day, slept on bare boards, and spent nearly the whole night in prayer and harsh penitences.”

A few years afterwards, in 1792, Maella found himself called upon once more to reinterpret this passage from the life of Saint Charles Borromeo, this time for the church of the New Barracks of San Carlos on the Isle of León in Cádiz. From a comparison of the two compositions of the same iconography, we can infer that there are certain details the artist did not regard as fully resolved in the Banco de San Carlos painting. In particular, the incarnation of impending death in the bearded figure receiving the viaticum from the saint is undoubtedly accentuated in the second version by baring the right shoulder of the young man who supports him, an intentional search for drama highlighted by the contrasting colour of the two bodies. In a context of enlightened reform affecting both private spirituality and the priest’s ministry, Mariano Salvador Maella essentially seeks in the Banco Nacional de San Carlos painting to recall how “[…] all the invaluable care Saint Charles put into preserving the life of the plague victims was less even so than that which he devoted to spiritual assistance so that they might die with the Holy Sacraments.”

José Manuel de la Mano

This painting was commissioned by the Banco de San Carlos for its chapel. The bank's records show that Maella was paid 7140 reales in February 1786 (Daily Ledger for 13 February 1786, page  99), so the story that the painting was brought from Italy by (as recounted by Félix Luis Baldasano in El edificio del Banco de España, Madrid, 1959, p. 221) is mistaken. The presence at the bank of a painting of the aristocratic St. Charles Borromeo, a saint who had been Archbishop of Milan, can be explained by the fact that he was the patron saint of the king, and that the new bank promoted by the king took the same name ['Carlos' being Spanish for 'Charles']. The iconography of the painting is that usually used to depict this saint. It shows the occasion when he ventured out during an episode of plague in Milan in 1576 to console and tend to the sick, disregarding the risk of contagion, to bring them food and administer the sacraments. A preparatory sketch by Maella for the large painting for the bank is conserved at the  library of the Royal Palace in Madrid. It varies from the final work in several points.

This is one of the most characteristic works of Maella's later years. Once again there are reminiscences of earlier works in the style of late Baroque artists from Rome, with their classical roots. The ideas of Mengs, who had returned once and for all to Rome in 1777, are abandoned. The viewer is taken into the space of the work in an orderly fashion, via the figures of the woman and the children on the left; the cleric kneeling with his back to us on the right recalls numerous compositions from the Baroque period in Rome, in which the structuring of the foreground results in movement and, in this case, in the disorder of the motley crowd. Maella establishes a direct link with the viewer through the figure of the cleric holding up the baldachin, who looks with collusion towards the congregation, with tears of admiration in his large eyes at the courage of the saint. Nothing remains here of the cold rationalism of Mengs or of the deep, silent drama of his scenes. The sharp vanishing points of the perspective, the movement of the baldachin and the presence of the cherubs at the top all denote a conventional, sentimental, Italianised style on the part of Maella. This is enhanced by the repetitive motifs, which are far removed from the new realism promoted by the Neoclassical movement. Maella's composition recalls the great canvas by Baroque decorative painter Pietro da Cortona (1650) that hangs in the church of San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome, in which da Cortona depicts another episode from the life of the same saint, shown in a penitential procession bearing the relic of the Holy Nail from the Crucifixion, also under a baldachin and surrounded by torches. This is one of the paintings that best evidences Maella's influence on the new generation of Spanish artists who studied at the Academy, such as the young Vicente López.

Manuela Mena