Valdés leal’s vanities: When painting breathes death

These two works, In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundi, painted between 1670 and 1672 for Seville’s Hospital de la Caridad, are not mere vanities. They are visual manifestos, oil-painted screams that howl the fleeting nature of all earthly glory. At a time when Spain, once an invincible empire, was sinking into decline, Valdés Leal turned religious morality into a macabre spectacle. His canvases do not merely remind us that "all things pass"—they show it with such violence that the viewer is left physically shaken.

Why, more than three centuries later, do these paintings still fascinate, frighten, even haunt? Because they do not speak only of others’ deaths. They speak of yours.

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01Seville in decline: an empire rotting from within

Seville in the 1670s was a city of stark contrasts. On one side, the cathedral’s spires pierced the sky like fingers reaching for God, and the palaces of the nobility still gleamed with the gold of the Americas. On the other, the alleyways reeked of poverty and plague, beggars crowded the church doors, and the bodies of the plague-stricken were dumped into mass graves. The city, once the gateway to the riches of the New World, had become a symbol of Spain’s decay.

It was in this context that Valdés Leal painted his vanities. Spain, under the rule of Charles II—the deformed, sterile king known as El Hechizado (the Bewitched)—was a country bled dry. Wars, famine, and epidemics had decimated the population. The Inquisition stood watch, hunting heresy even in the smallest details of art. In this climate of fear and repentance, art was meant to serve faith—and what could be more effective than a painting that chilled the blood?

Unlike his rival Murillo, whose smiling Madonnas and plump angels soothed the soul, Valdés Leal chose to show the other side of the coin. Where Murillo painted redemption, he painted the fall. Where Murillo offered hope, he brandished the scythe. His canvases were not invitations to prayer but punches to the gut.

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02The painter of horrors: a cursed artist?

Juan de Valdés Leal was born in 1622 in a Seville already marked by the shadows of decay. The son of a Portuguese goldsmith, he trained first in Córdoba, then in Zurbarán’s workshop, where he mastered chiaroscuro and the power of simplified forms. But he quickly developed a more restless, almost violent style, one that clashed with his master’s serenity.

His personal life was just as turbulent. Of his ten children, six died in infancy. One can easily imagine the impact of these repeated losses on a man already obsessed with death. Some art historians have even suggested that his paintings were a way to exorcise his own despair—as if, by depicting decay, he could keep it at bay.

Yet Valdés Leal was no outcast. He worked for Seville’s most prestigious brotherhoods, received major commissions, and was even appointed the cathedral’s official painter. But his style unsettled. Critics of the time found him "too realistic," "too brutal." One chronicler even wrote that his paintings "gave nightmares to the hospital’s patients." Ironically, it was for this very hospital that he painted his two masterpieces.

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03In Ictu Oculi: when death plays the director

Step into the chapel of the Hospital de la Caridad, and your gaze is immediately drawn to In Ictu Oculi. The composition is diabolically effective: a giant skeleton, draped in a white shroud, strides diagonally across the canvas, sweeping aside the symbols of earthly power with a theatrical gesture. In its left hand, it holds an open coffin, as if offering an invitation. In its right, a scythe—but a scythe that strangely resembles a paintbrush.

What strikes is the movement. Death does not merely exist; it acts. It crushes a crown beneath its foot, topples a papal tiara, snuffs out a candle with a breath. The objects it tramples—books, armor, scepters—are not random. They represent everything men cling to: knowledge, power, glory. And yet, in the blink of an eye (in ictu oculi), all is swept away.

But the most unsettling detail lies in the skeleton’s hand. Its right index finger is missing. Some see it as the artist’s signature, who may have lost a finger in an accident. Others read it as a symbol: death itself is incomplete, imperfect. As if Valdés Leal were reminding us that even the end is not an absolute certainty.

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04Finis Gloriae Mundi: a decomposing corpse and the last judgment

If In Ictu Oculi is a theatrical performance, Finis Gloriae Mundi is an autopsy. At the center of the canvas, a decomposing corpse lies in an open coffin. Its greenish skin, blackened lips, fingers swollen with gangrene—everything reeks of putrefaction. Above it, an angel and a demon fight over its soul, while another angel holds a scale, symbol of divine judgment.

What strikes is the almost clinical realism of the scene. Valdés Leal does not merely suggest decay; he shows it. The worms crawling over the body, the flies buzzing around, the flesh peeling from the bones—all are painted with a precision bordering on obsession. Some historians believe he drew inspiration from real corpses, perhaps those of the hospital’s plague victims.

Yet beyond the macabre, there is a near-mystical dimension. The corpse seems to emit a greenish glow, as if undergoing a transformation. Some see an alchemical reference: decay as a necessary step toward rebirth. Others read it as a metaphor for Spain itself, a rotting empire awaiting judgment.

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05The technique of a visionary: how to paint the invisible

Valdés Leal was not just a painter of death; he was a master technician. His canvases are masterpieces of control, where every detail is designed to create a precise effect.

Take the light. In In Ictu Oculi, it falls from the upper left, like a divine spotlight, illuminating the skeleton while leaving the rest in shadow. This harsh, almost violent light gives the scene a supernatural quality. In Finis Gloriae Mundi, by contrast, the light seems to emanate from the corpse itself, as if the rot were phosphorescent.

Color, too, plays a crucial role. Valdés Leal uses emerald greens for mold, blood reds for decomposing flesh, chalky whites for bones. These hues, both realistic and symbolic, create a palette that oscillates between the clinical and the supernatural.

And then there are the textures. The velvety softness of the skeleton’s shroud, the roughness of the trampled crown, the slimy viscosity of the worms on the corpse—all are rendered with such precision that the canvas seems almost tactile. Valdés Leal does not paint death; he makes you feel it.

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06The legacy of a cursed painter: from Goya to Guillermo del Toro

Valdés Leal died in obscurity in 1690, penniless and without immediate heirs. Yet his influence has endured across the centuries, like a curse that refuses to fade.

In the 19th century, the Romantics rediscovered his works and saw in them a foreshadowing of their own fascination with the macabre. Théophile Gautier wrote that his paintings "make the soul shiver like a winter wind." In the 20th century, the Surrealists—Dalí, Ernst—drew inspiration from his dreamlike, nightmarish worlds. Dalí, in particular, admired how Valdés Leal transformed reality into hallucination.

Today, his influence lingers in horror cinema. Guillermo del Toro, a great admirer of Baroque painting, has admitted that the demons of Finis Gloriae Mundi inspired those in Pan’s Labyrinth. And what of the zombies that populate modern horror films? They are but distant descendants of Valdés Leal’s decomposing corpses.

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07Why do these paintings still speak to us?

Because death, in the end, has not changed. It remains that great unknown, that shadow lurking at the edge of every life. Valdés Leal did not invent it, but he had the genius to make it visible, tangible, almost palpable.

His vanities are not moral lessons. They are mirrors. They remind us that our crowns, our books, our armor are but illusions. That glory is fleeting. That decay is always waiting.

And yet, there is something liberating in these paintings. By confronting us with the inevitable, Valdés Leal invites us to live. To look death in the face in order to savor every moment of life.

So the next time you find yourself in Seville, step into that chapel. Let the dim light envelop you, and look at these paintings. They are waiting. And they have something to say to you.