Spanish Painting: Rococo to Neoclassical Eras
Rococo Painting in Spain
While few Spanish artists can be definitively categorized as Rococo, Luis Meléndez and Luis Paret stand out.
Luis Paret y Alcázar (1746-1799) is the most significant representative of Spanish Rococo painting. He painted gallant and amiable genre scenes with brilliant hues and great decorative effect. His works include The Dance of the Masks, Couples, and Party at the Royal Botanical Gardens. For Carlos III, he also created a series of views of Cantabrian ports and marinas.
Roman Painting
Roman painting was decisively influenced by Greek art. Since Caesar’s time, Greek paintings were torn from walls and brought to Rome, which is one reason why few Greek murals are preserved.
Like other arts, painting in Rome had a practical purpose: decorating houses and palaces. Painters were considered craftsmen, although those who painted on wood held greater prestige.
Murals were primarily executed using the fresco technique, though mixed techniques were sometimes used. Panel painting employed tempera and encaustic techniques. The color range was broad, including black, white, red, and yellow, with occasional use of green, blue, and violet, mixed with water and sometimes with glues. Roman painting is classified into four styles, established in the 19th century based on preserved paintings in Pompeii.
Neoclassical Painting in Spain
Lacking pictorial remains of Greco-Roman antiquity, Neoclassical painting drew inspiration from sculpture, especially reliefs, giving it a strong sculptural quality.
Features:
- Academic predominance of drawing over color.
- The basis of beauty is the harmony of proportions and light.
- Main subjects include portraits, mythological scenes, and historical paintings.
- Clear and diffuse light defines figures and creates a solemn atmosphere. Contrasts in light are not emphasized.
Influences include French artists like Ingres, Gérard, and Prud’hon, as well as Italian and English styles.
Renaissance painting is full of religiosity; however, each artist sought their own style, where the portrait and the representation of the landscape are very important. During the Renaissance, various schools arose, taking the name of the city where they developed, including the Florentine School, the Venetian, and those of Siena, Umbria, Parma, Verona, Padua, Milan, and Carrara.
Romanesque Painting in Spain
Romanesque painting can be categorized by technique and application:
- Mural painting on apses, vessels, vaults, and columns.
- Paint applied to monumental sculpture to enhance expressiveness.
- Painting on wood (e.g., altar frontals).
- Codex illumination (miniatures).
The physical characteristics of Romanesque painting mirror those of sculpture, though compositions tend to be clearer. Symmetry and juxtaposed compositions predominate. Themes align with sculpture, with a higher prevalence of the human figure and biblical scenes.
The technique used is fresco for mural painting in church interiors and apses, adapting to the architectural setting and also used to decorate altar frontals.
Characteristics of Romanesque painting:
- Two-dimensional, lacking depth.
- Strong expression.
- Flat colors (not mixed).
- Great importance of drawing.
- Little importance of modeling.
- Little importance of light.
- Backgrounds often involve overlapping horizontal bands of color (Mozarabic influence).
- Mozarabic and Byzantine influences.
Greek Painting
Greek Painting was an important chapter in Greek Art. We know the names of many famous painters of their time and have references to many of their works, but unfortunately, none survive. We can see some of their characteristics in ceramic vase painting, mosaics, and later Roman copies.