Zoran Mušič

Mušič made this pen drawing during his study stay in Spain in 1935, where he proved to be a skilled draughtsman soon after finishing the art academy in Zagreb. Jotting down his impressions from the Iberian Peninsula, he masterfully used both the line and hatching.   

During his visit to Spain, he was staying in Madrid and copying works in the Prado, and meanwhile travelling through the country, painting outdoors and writing a diary. He visited Toledo, Escorial, and travelled by train all the way to Valencia. He was attracted by the stony landscape, peasants in the field, town walls and cathedrals, bullfights and processions. He was in Spain during spring months, thus in the time of festivities of the Holy Week. Particularly interesting for the young painter was the procession of the penitents which he most likely saw in Toledo on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday and made a pen drawing of it in his sketchbook. It is a picturesque procession of brotherhoods, when the penitents imitated Christ's suffering by carrying the cross and practising flagellation thus publicly atoning for their sins. During the rite they were wearing coats, they concealed their faces with masks or with conical head-covering called capirote. The tradition originates from the 15th century, but was later forbidden in Spain during Franco's dictatorship; however, it was continued to be observed in former Spanish colonies. Nowadays, it has been restored also in certain villages of the Rioja province.

On the verso of the pen drawing Mušič wrote the title in Spanish Los disciplinarios, and it was published as a visual accompaniment to his diary notes in the Slovenec newspaper with the title Penitenti (Penitents), and later in journal Umetnost it was called Spokorniki (Repentant Sinners).

The collection of the National Gallery of Slovenia acquired the drawing as a donation from the director Ivan Zorman. It was him who recognized Mušič's talent already in 1934 and enabled him to obtain a scholarship for a study trip to Spain.