Inspired by an Andalusian folk legend, this work depicts a young lover’s dramatic pact with the devil to build a bridge across the Ronda Gorge. The palette-knife technique creates a rough, powerful texture that heightens the scene’s supernatural and tragic character. Human forms trapped in stone, monstrous silhouettes and a landscape ablaze come together in a composition charged with myth, despair and damnation.
“There is a folk tradition in which the devil, plying his trade and seeking to win souls for his cauldrons, transforms himself into a master craftsman of many trades. His greatest speciality: bridges.
In the old houses of Ronda, the cracked voices of elderly women still echo…
One dark night, a young lover tries to visit his beloved on the other side of the gorge. The storm gathers strength, and the river becomes impossible to cross.
The devil appears and offers his services. The young man yields. The pact is sealed, and the devil works in a frenzy. But dawn catches him unawares.
One stone was still missing, and in his despair, the young man casts himself into the abyss. The imprints of his hands remain upon the crags, monstrous in form.
The penitents and ghostly beings who witnessed it are now eternal rock, their red silhouettes still visible in the glow of the infernal creation, still smouldering…”
V. de Espona