Diego Polo the Elder (Burgos, 1560 – Madrid, 1617?)

Diego Polo the Elder (Burgos, 1560 – Madrid, 1617?)
"Pentecost"
Oil on canvas. Relined. Signed in Alcalá: "Didacus Polo inbentor faciebat compluti". With a motto handwritten in Latin in the inferior margin. 151 x 121 cm.
Diego Polo the Elder was a Spanish painter who appears to have been trained by Patricio Cajés (Arezzo, Italia, c. 1540 - Madrid, 1612) and active in Alcalá de Henares and Madrid. According to the painter and historian Ceán Bermúdez (Gijón, 1749 - Madrid, 1829), "he began to gain a reputation as a good colourist [and he painted] a St. Jerome flogged by angels and a penitent Magdalene, that are in the chapel of the college of the Escorial". Despite the fact that Bermúdez considered that Polo died in 1600, there is a documented signature of the painter as a witness on a promissory note in 1607 and, additionally, the artist dated one of the few paintings in his name that has arrived to the present time in 1617 in Alcalá de Henares: "Adoration of the Magi", which is kept at the Church in Jócano, Alava. That painting is signed in the same way as this one: "DIDACVS POLVS INVEN/TOR FACIEBAT COM/PLVTI. 1617".
Bibliography: CEÁN BERMÚDEZ, Juan Agustín. "Diccionario de los más ilustres profesores de las Bellas Artes en España" (Dictionary of the most illustrious professors of Fine Art in Spain). Madrid, 1800.
ANGULO ÍÑIGUEZ, Diego, and PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso E. "Pintura madrileña del segundo tercio del siglo XVII" (Paintings from Madrid from the second third of the 17th century). Madrid, 1983.