La grazia

Julio Romero de Torres painted the women of Cordoba his whole life, and this canvas belongs to a trilogy he built around a single idea, the pull between sacred and worldly love. A young nude woman has fallen, and two nuns lift her gently. Behind them an old woman stands for wisdom, her face more forgiving than stern, while off to one side a figure in black weeps and holds a sprig of lily, the old emblem of lost purity. Romero de Torres worked in his native Cordoba, in southern Spain, in these years, blending Catholic imagery with the local types he knew, and he kept the mood grave and still rather than dramatic. The painting now hangs in the house where he lived and worked, a museum given over entirely to him.