Spanish Painters Biographies

Diego Velázquez

The most important Spanish painter of the 17th century.

Velázquez is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest artists. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable power of observation in portraying both the living model and still life.

Stimulated by the study of 16th-century Venetian painting, he developed from a master of faithful likeness and characterization into the creator of masterpieces of visual impression unique in his time.

With brilliant diversity of brushstrokes and subtle harmonies of color, he achieved effects of form and texture, space, light, and atmosphere, that make him the chief forerunner of 19th-century French Impressionism.

The principal source of information about Velázquez’s early career is the treatise Arte de la pintura (“The Art of Painting”), published in 1649 by his master and father-in-law Francisco Pacheco, who is more important as a biographer and theoretician than as a painter. The first complete biography of Velázquez appeared in the third volume (El Parnaso español; “The Spanish Parnassus”) of El museo pictórico y escala óptica (“The Pictorial Museum and Optical Scale”), published in 1724 by the court painter and art scholar Antonio Palomino. This was based on biographical notes made by Velázquez’s pupil Juan de Alfaro, who was Palomino’s patron. The number of personal documents is very small, and official documentation relating to his paintings is relatively rare. Since he seldom signed or dated his works, their identification and chronology has often to be based on stylistic evidence alone. Though many copies of his portraits were evidently made in his studio by assistants, his own production was not large and his surviving autograph works number fewer than 150. He is known to have worked slowly, and during his later years much of his time was occupied by his duties as a court official in Madrid.

According to Palomino, Velázquez’s first master was the Sevillian painter Francisco Herrera the Elder (c. 1576–1656). In 1611 he was formally apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, whose daughter he married in 1618. “After five years of education and training,” Pacheco writes, “I married him to my daughter, moved by his virtue, integrity, and good parts and by the expectations of his disposition and great talent.” Although Pacheco was himself a mediocre Mannerist painter, it was through his teaching that Velázquez developed his early naturalistic style. “He worked from life,” writes Pacheco, “making numerous studies of his model in various poses and thereby he gained certainty in his portraiture.” He was not more than 20 when he painted the Water Seller of Seville (c. 1619), in which the control of the composition, color, and light, the naturalness of the figures and their poses, and realistic still life already reveal his keen eye and prodigious facility with the brush. The strong modeling and sharp contrasts of light and shade of Velázquez’s early illusionist style closely resemble the technique of dramatic lighting called tenebrism, which was one of the innovations of the Italian painter Caravaggio (1573–1610). Velázquez’s early subjects were mostly religious or genre (scenes of daily life). He popularized a new type of composition in Spanish painting, the bodegón, a kitchen scene with prominent still life, such as the Old Woman Frying Eggs. Sometimes the bodegones had religious scenes in the background, as in Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. The Adoration of the Magi is one of the few Sevillian paintings of Velázquez that have remained in Spain.

Citations
MLA Style:
"Diego Velázquez." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 04 Jun. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/624772/Diego-Velazquez>.
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Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

The most popular Baroque religious painter of 17th-century Spain.

Main patrons were the religious orders, especially the Franciscans, and the confraternities in Sevilla (Seville) and Andalusia.

Among Murillo’s earliest works is the Virgin of the Rosary (c. 1642). In the vestigial style of his artistically conservative Sevillian master, Juan del Castillo, this early work combines 16th-century Italian Mannerism and Flemish realism. The 11 paintings that originally hung in the small cloister of San Francisco in Sevilla—e.g., the Ecstasy of St. Diego of Alcalá (1646)—are executed in the more contemporary naturalistic style of the Sevillian school, established by Diego Velázquez and continued by Francisco de Zurbarán. That series is characterized by realism and tenebrism (contrasting light and shade) and use of commonplace models, with an emphasis on genre or scenes of everyday life.

In the 1650s a striking transformation of style occurred, usually attributed to a visit to Madrid, where Murillo undoubtedly met Velázquez and studied the works of Titian, Rubens, and Van Dyck in the royal collections. The softly modeled forms, rich colors, and broad brushwork of the 1652 Immaculate Conception reflect direct visual contact with the art of the 16th-century Venetians and the Flemish Baroque painters. The St. Leandro and St. Isidoro (1655) are even further removed from the simple naturalism of his earlier Franciscan saints. These seated figures, more than life size, are in the grand manner of Baroque portraiture, which had become fashionable at the Spanish court.

The Vision of St. Anthony (1656), one of Murillo’s most celebrated pictures, is an early example of his so-called “vaporous” style, which was derived from Venetian painting. In 1660 Murillo was one of the founders and first president of the Academy of Painting in Sevilla. During the two following decades he executed several important commissions, generally representing dramatized genre on a grand scale. From 1678 onward Murillo worked on another series of paintings, for the Hospicio de Venerables Sacerdotes in Sevilla, which included the celebrated Soult Immaculate Conception (1678), which was removed to Franceby Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult during the Napoleonic period. Murillo’s late style is exemplified by his unfinished works for the Capuchin church at Cádiz and the Two Trinities (popularly known as the “Holy Family”). The often mystical significance of his subjects is countered by the idealized reality of his figures based on familiar human archetypes, with natural gestures and tender, devout expressions, creating an effect of intimate rather than exalted religious sentiment.

Murillo had many pupils and innumerable followers. His paintings were copied and imitated throughout Spain and its empire. He was the first Spanish painter to achieve widespread European fame, and until the 19th century he was the only Spanish artist whose works were extensively known outside the Hispanic world.

Citations
MLA Style:
"Bartolomé Esteban Murillo." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 04 Jun. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/398128/Bartolome-Esteban-Murillo>.

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Francisco de Zurbarán
Major painter of the Spanish Baroque, especially noted for religious subjects.

His work is characterized by Caravaggesque naturalism and tenebrism, the latter a style in which most forms are depicted in shadow but a few are dramatically lighted.

Zurbarán was apprenticed 1614–16 to Pedro Díaz de Villanueva in Sevilla (Seville), where he spent the greater part of his life. No works by his master have survived, but Zurbarán’s earliest known painting, an Immaculate Conception dated 1616, suggests that he was schooled in the same naturalistic style as his contemporary Diego Velázquez. From 1617 to 1628 he was living in Llerena, near his birthplace; then he returned to Sevilla, where he settled at the invitation of the city corporation. In 1634 he visited Madrid and painted a series of Labours of Hercules and two scenes of the Defense of Cádiz, which formed part of the decoration of the Salón de Reinos in the Buen Retiro palace. The Adoration of the Kings, from a series painted for the Carthusian monastery at Jerez, is signed with the title “Painter to the King” and dated 1638, the year in which Zurbarán decorated a ceremonial ship presented to the king by the city of Sevilla. The paintings for the Buen Retiro are the only royal commissions and the only mythological or historical subjects by Zurbarán that are known. His contact with the court had little effect on his artistic evolution; he remained throughout his life a provincial artist and was par excellence a painter of religious life. In 1658 Zurbarán moved to Madrid.
Zurbarán’s personal style was already formed in Sevilla by 1629, and its development was probably stimulated by the early works of Velázquez and by the works of José de Ribera. It was a style that lent itself well to portraiture and still life, but it found its most characteristic expression in his religious subjects. Indeed Zurbarán uses naturalism more convincingly than other exponents for the expression of intense religious devotion. His apostles, saints, and monks are painted with almost sculptural modeling and with an emphasis on the minutiae of their dress that gives verisimilitude to their miracles, visions, and ecstasies. This distinctive combination of realism and religious sensibility conforms to the Counter-Reformation guidelines for artists outlined by the Council of Trent (1545–63). Zurbarán’s art was popular with monastic orders in Sevilla and the neighbouring provinces, and he received commissions for many large cycles. Of these, only the legends of St. Jerome and of the Hieronymite monks (1638–39) that decorate the chapel and sacristy of the Hieronymite monastery at Guadalupe have remained in situ. Little is known of his production in the 1640s apart from an altarpiece at Zafra (1643–44) and records of a large number of paintings destined for Lima, Peru (1647). By 1658 both the style and the content of Zurbarán’s paintings had undergone a cha that can be attributed to the influence of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

In his late devotional pictures, such as Holy Family and Immaculate Conception (1659 and 1661, respectively), the figures have become more idealized and less solid in form, and their expression of religious emotion is marred by sentimentality.

MLA Style:
"Francisco de Zurbarán." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 04 Jun. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/658477/Francisco-de-Zurbaran>.

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Francisco Jose de Goya

Greatest Spanish Painter and Engraver of the 18th-Century.

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish painter and engraver of Spanish Rococo and Romantic styles. Goya's famous paintings include "Saturn Devouring One of His Sons," (c. 1822) "The Third of May 1808," (1814) and "La Maja Vestida." (c. 1803) He was a Spanish court painter who also painted portraits of royalties.

Goya produced about 500 oil paintings. He was a master of the traditional styles of portraiture, at the same time open to experiments. He virtually foreshadowed much later major painters, from Eugène Delacroix to Pablo Picasso.

Early years: Tapestry Cartoons
Francisco Jose de Goya was born on March 30, 1746, in a poor village, north of Spain. He began studying art at the age of fourteen. By 1766 he was working for a painter to the King of Spain. He later married his master's sister. Goya visited Rome, returned to his home in Saragossa, and in 1775 went back to Madrid where he obtained work in a tapestry factory, making painting used as designs called "cartoons" by the weavers. During the 17 years that followed, Goya made sixty such paintings that displayed colorful pictures of the more charming aspects of Spanish life in his day.

Painter to King Charles IV and other Spanish Royalties
At 40, Goya was appointed painter to King Charles IV. Like the contemporary baroque artist Diego Velázquez, he became a court painter. His portraits of the royal family and court immediately became famous that in due time, he was named Court Painter. He painted a portrait of Queen Maria Luisa and that of four successive kings of Spain.
He also continued to paint religious works for churches at Valdermoro, Santa Ana de Valladolid, Toledo Cathedral, and in Valencia Cathedral.
Read more: http://paintingdrawing.suite101.com/article.cfm/francisco_jose_de_goya_artist#ixzz0HUjgL9GX&B

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History of Seville

Seville's history is intimately linked to the Guadalquivir River. From its origins the Guadalquivir has played the role of river port and bridge between the Atlantic Ocean and the region of Andalusia. The original Seville was born where the river ceased to be navigable for large vessels. Archaeological excavations indicate that human settlement was stable to the ninth century BC.

For centuries, scholars and analysts called for Heracles, the most popular of the heroes of mythology, the honor of marking six stone pillars where Julius Caesar founded the city of Seville, which he called Luli Hispalis Romulo.

In the year 206 B.C. Scipio Africanus established a contingent of Italian soldiers in veterans, a few miles from Seville. Surely this is a must visit place for those who want to understand the high degree of development reached the province of Bética during the imperial era. The birthplace of Trajan and Hadrian lived days of glory over the centuries II, III and IV A.C. At the end of the Empire had become the most important city in Hispania and the eleventh of the world.

In the year 411, the Vandals seized silingos Andalusia province. Hispalis-taking occurred in the 426 by the Vandal Gunderico. Another important impact was during the Visigoth's domination stage which coincided with the reign of Emperor Justinian in Constantinople (527-565). During the reign of Recaredo, in the year 589, has a splendid cultural bonanza.

The Roman name of Hispalis was switch for Isbiliya in the year 712 when the city fell under the domination of Islam. During five centuries of domination, Seville played a political and cultural concern. The fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba in 1035 led to the disintegration of the territorial unit Andalusí, unveiling a series of independent kingdoms, among which was Seville. During the period of government of the monarchs Abbadie, Isbiliya not only reached its maximum territorial expansion, but also a total dominance over the other Taifas. (Small kingdoms)

To control the craving expansionist Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon, the Muslim kings of Badajoz, Granada and Seville, agreed to seek help from outside and there was another force that the closest of African Berber Almoravids. In the end, the power is resolved against almorávid own kingdoms Taifas, take over Seville in 1091. The extreme rigidity of religion and social intolerance imposed by this dynasty disappointed the people, who quickly organized in independence movements. This led to arrival in the country of Almohads who landed in Cadiz in 1146. The Almohad Seville imposed as administrative capital of Al-Andalus. Arrived on the welfare and prosperity; Although, interspersed with others of concern, because of the frequent incursions into Spanish territory and the periodic flooding of the Guadalquivir. This did not prevent the Almohads develop a constructive program in which we must mention the building of a mosque where today stands the imposing cathedral Seville. By the year 1220 the Almohad power walks toward his total decline, triumphantly entered the city in 1248 King Ferdinand III, turning the city into a vast realm of enduring Christian civil and ecclesiastical life. His son and successor Alfonso X "El Sabio" always felt real weakness for Seville, to be matched for by its inhabitants. The years following the reconquest of Seville, the city was a place of settlement of a large colony of Jews. In 1391 the Jewish community was subjected to a violent assault with numerous killings and looting. The old Jewish quarter of Seville is formed districts of Santa Cruz and San Bartolomé. In the year 1401, the council of the Cathedral of Seville adopted a landmark agreement for the religious history of the city, nothing less than building a new metropolitan church. The Seville Cathedral was consecrated in 1507. With the discovery of America in 1492 began the modern age, and Seville is raised for more than two centuries in the New World port. Reales Alcazares in Seville in 1503 created the Casa de la Contratación, fundamental body to regulate commercial relations, scientific and legal disputes with America. In the early sixteenth century, concern for counting in Seville with higher education resulted in the founding of the Colegio Santa Maria de Jesus Maese Rodrigo Fernández de Santaella. This institution was the germ of the future Hispalense University. Despite the affluence experienced during the previous century, the seventeenth-century Seville cannot escape the severe economic crisis that affected Europe at that time in general and Spain in particular. Seville, inflamed spirit counter becomes urbanistically convent in town. There is no doubt the weight of religion in the Seville Baroque pulse to earn the title of "Land of Holy Mary."
With the relocation of the Casa de la Contratación and the Consulate of Cadiz in Maritime 1717, Sevilla lost the monopoly of Indian trade and began its decline. It was not until the second half of the nineteenth century for the city to start a new expansion based on the railway construction and building on the demolition of part of its ancient walls. The city is growing to the east and south is the nineteenth Ensanche, which is completed in the first decades of the twentieth century with the buildings constructed during the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 (Plaza de España, Maria Luisa Gardens). After exposure Seville undertakes the refurbishment of its infrastructure: creation of the airport, waterworks pipe from the river and its streams to curb the flood disaster, a network of trams, and so on. The city is thrown from the'60s to a real expansion that set the current suburb. In 1992 the World Exposition was held (Expo 92) in the Isla de la Cartuja. Seville enters the twenty-first century completely remodeled and modernized.

Translated from http://institucional.us.es/relint/sevillahist.htm

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An Authentic Temple: La Mezquita de Cordoba

As soon as you approach Cordoba your eyes will be searching for one of the most tolerant religious places in the world; Cordoba’s Mosque.

It is important to mention the history of this place before describing the wonderful architecture and magnificent details. The Mosque is a mosaic itself. First, The Roman Empire built a pagan temple on the site. Then The Visigoths after the fall of the Romans, replaced the temple with the Chrislargest mosque in all of Islam after that of Caaba, in Arabia. The Mesquite started to built during the 10th century, while the emir, Abd ar-Rahman 111 was consider a great ruler of tian church of Saint Vincent In the early 8th century, when the Arabs conquered the peninsula, they tore down the church and began building their great mosque, by doing this, Cordoba become the centre of Muslim power in Spain and the the Islamic history, by this time Cordoba was the largest, most prosperous cities of Europe.

The Mosque of Cordoba will welcome you with the Patio de los Naranjos (Courtyard of the Orange Trees) which is also the entrance point of La Giralda in Seville. The courtyard has also fountains that are used in the Islamic religion to get purified before going inside the temple.
Once you are inside of the Mosque, you will start to notice the many little chapels that are all around the place. This has also an historical explanation; the original mosque was surrounded by open arches. This is very common in the Islamic religion because it represent the mystical journey toward Allah. The Christians on the other side thought that they could be used as a backdrop for chapels dedicated to the various saints.

Regarding the arches and pillars, you will see an alternative chain of brick and stone, creating a colorful pattern that is very unique of this construction. If you have time, count the granite jasper and marble pillars, there is a total of 850 of them. Many of Andalusia constructions used recycle material from other places, in the case of ‘The Mosque the columns were taken from the Church of Saint Vincent which had previously occupied the site; others came from Roman and Visigothic homes in the city, and when these ran out, the Arabs made their own. But the columns were for the most part only seven or eight feet high, which meant that the huge ceiling would be aesthetically too low. So the Moors brilliantly invented a double-tiered column-and-arch.”

Another important detail is the mihrab, a key element in all mosques that indicates the direction of Mecca. The wall which is the closest to the river, is surrounded with arched windows, and adorned with mosaics.

Cordoba is the only place that has a Catholic cathedral that is call mosque instead of church. Open your eyes as much as you can and let the construction speak to you, please also remember to do a warm up exercise for your neck; you will be looking up all the time.

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