Spanish Painting: Centers, Masters, and Evolution
Spanish Painting
There are three major art centers:
- Madrid: Velazquez’s host was the foremost painter.
- Seville: The next focus of interest, with Zurbaran, Murillo, and Valdes Leal.
- Valencia: The third center of momentum, thanks to Ribera and Francisco Ribalta.
In the early years, following the tradition of the seventeenth-century Escorial: severity, decorum, rigidity, and naturalism. Later in the reign of Philip IV, painting reached its maturity from the hand of Jose de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbaran, Alonso Cano, and Diego Velázquez. Painting became increasingly baroque through the influence of Italian painting.
Jose Ribalta (1591-1652)
Born in Xativa, he soon headed to Italy, where he spent his entire life. He was a painter strongly influenced by Caravaggio and deeply worried about the studies of light and leftovers; he took an interest in naturalism. He married the daughter of a powerful Neapolitan painter and became the best-known painter in Naples, working in turn for the Spanish court. His style is naturalistic, dramatic, vigorous, and sensual. In this period, he created The Great Calvary (1618). In 1620, he started cultivation engraving. Works of his mature period are St. Jerome and the Drunken Silenus, in which he uses a more pasty technique and stresses the effects of light and tangible reality. Between 1631 and 1637, he painted a Pristine Convention. Some of his masterpieces, The Dream of Jacob and the Martyrdom of St. Philip, date from 1639. Limping is from 1642.
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660)
He is the most outstanding personality of this generation and of European paintings of his time. He used aerial perspective through color and light, in addition to all the thematic treatment, even naked or mythological themes.
The first stage in Seville: His paintings are dark, and opaque dark colors are used. Examples of this stage are: Old Woman Cooking Eggs, Christ in the House of Martha, and The Waterseller of Seville, with a chiaroscuro technique in great detail of the objects. In 1623, he settled at the court, initiating the first stage of Madrid, working mainly as a portrait painter. Rubens’s arrival in Madrid changed his color, as shown in The Drunkards. In his first trip to Italy (1629-1631), Velazquez left dark tones and became interested in studying the landscape and capturing the atmosphere. The Forge of Vulcan is an example of what he learned in Italy. Back at the Madrid court, he began his long and fruitful stage. The most important work of these years is the Surrender of Breda. Later, he painted the Equestrian Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares, among others. All these works tend toward perfection of technique and the psychological depth of the characters in question. At the end of 1648, he made his second trip to Italy, where he undertook the Portrait of Pope Innocent X, which embodies a novel vividness and intensity. In 1651, he returned to Spain and began his last period, in which he painted some of his masterpieces, like The Rokeby Venus; it is the first comprehensive nude, and The Spinners. A little later, he made his most famous painting, Las Meninas, which gives an impression of realism and visual deception.