Golden Age of Spanish Painting (1492-1659). In seventeenth century, Spanish painters produced outstanding artworks in Mannerist and Baroque style. The Burial of Count Orgaz, Las Meninas, Surrender of Breda, St. Luke the Painter before Christ on the Cross, Dead Christ Supported by an Angel, and Beggar Boys Eating Melon are some of this great masterpieces. Spanish art contained a strong mark of mysticism and religion that was encouraged by the counter-reformation and the patronage of Spain's strongly Catholic monarchs and aristocracy. [1] It was, in fact, the great Spanish masters who guided European painting along the paths of naturalistic realism. [2]
The culmination of Spanish seventeenth-century painting, and one of the climaxes of world art in general, is reached in the work of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660), an artist whose mastery of space and light was admirably served by an impeccable technique. [3]
Masterpieces
By El Greco
A View of Toledo
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
Portrait of a Nobleman with His Hand on His Chest
Christ in the cross adored by two donors.
The Beggar
El Martirio de San Felipe
Immaculate Conception
The Penitent Magdalen
La defensa de Cádiz
Cristo en la cruz
St. Luke the Painter before Christ on the Cross
Aparición de San Pedro a San Pedro Nolasco
The Apotheosis of Thomas Aquinas
La Asunción de la Virgen
Dolorosa
The Little Fruit Seller
Beggar Boys Eating Grapes and Melon
Inmaculada de El Escorial.
Landscape painting is rare in Spanish art, and appeared mainly as background in this era.
El Greco, The Vision of Saint John, ca. 1608-1614
Diego Velazquez, Villa Medici, Pavilion of Ariadne, 1630.
Diego Velazquez, Cardinal Infante Don Fernando as a Hunter, 1632-1633.
Diego Velazquez, King Philip IV as a Huntsman, 1634-1635.
Diego Velazquez, St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit, 1635.
Diego Velazquez, Prince Baltasar Carlos with the Count-Duke of Olivares at the Royal Mews, 1636.
Some Spanish Still life painters in the Golden Age were: Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627), Christóbal Ramírez de Arellano, Juan van der Hamen y León (1596-1631), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) and Antonio de Pereda (1611 - 1678). Sánchez Cotán, stylistically, falls within the school of El Escorial, with Venetian influence. For approximately twenty years he pursued a successful career in Toledo as a painter. [4]
Christóbal Ramírez de Arellano, Still Life with Grapes, Melon and Apricots.
Juan van der Hamen y León, Still Life with Fruit and Glassware.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Tazas y vasos, 1633.
Antonio de Pereda, Still Life with Fruits, 1650.
See also
MAKING ART WITH ART