Baroque Art and Architecture

IV

Baroque Art in Spain

Although he is acknowledged as one of the great Spanish painters, the influence of El Greco's Mannerism was fairly slight in Spain. The early appearance of a naturalistic baroque style was due to an influence from Italy.

A

Spanish Baroque Painting

Vicente Carducho, a Florentine artist, was influential in establishing a Counter Reformation anti-Mannerist painting style in central Spain. Juan Sanchez Cotan and Juan van der Hamen were both expert at painting realistic still lifes that combine an influence from the Netherlands with that of Caravaggio. In Valencia, a naturalistic baroque mode is observed in the work of Francisco Ribalta, inspired by the art of both the Italian High Renaissance painter Titian and Jusepe de Ribera. Seville and Madrid became the two greatest centers of Spanish baroque art. For example, early in the 17th century, baroque characteristics emerged in the paintings of Juan de las Roelas, Francisco Pacheco, and Francisco de Herrera the Elder. In his early work, Francisco de Zurbarán, who settled in Seville in 1629, derived some of his inspiration from Flemish prints, but his most impressive baroque compositions are deeply moving for their direct and realistic approach to religious subject matter. Zurbarán worked almost exclusively for convents and monasteries. Late in his life his style was touched by the softening influence of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Works by Caravaggio were seen in Seville by 1603. Their popularity partially accounts for the strong realist influence on the work of Spain's greatest baroque painter, Diego de Velázquez. In Seville Velázquez painted such earthy works as Old Woman Frying Eggs (1618, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). In 1623 he moved to Madrid to serve as portraitist to Philip IV, a post he retained throughout his life. His series of royal portraits culminated in The Maids of Honor (1656, Prado, Madrid), representing the royal family, court functionaries, and the artist himself. Velázquez was also noted for historical and mythological compositions and for his work as an architect and decorator.

Two other important artists of Velázquez's generation were also from Andalucía—Alonso Cano and Murillo. Cano (also a sculptor and architect) is noted for his sensitive renderings of flesh, as in the Descent into Limbo (1650?, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), one of the few Spanish baroque treatments of the nude. Murillo specialized in sentimental genre paintings and renderings of the Immaculate Conception. The late baroque in Seville is best represented by Juan de Valdés Leal, whose two paintings (1672) of vanitas (reminders of mortality) subjects in the Hospital of La Caridad, Seville, are horrifying in their morbid, ultrarealistic depictions of skeletons and putrefying cadavers. In Madrid, the last generation of baroque painters includes Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreño de Miranda, and Claudio Coello, artists who cultivated a style based on the Italian high baroque.

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B

Spanish Baroque Sculpture

Italian art had little impact on Spanish baroque sculpture, which was essentially an outgrowth of the medieval woodcarving tradition. Realism and intense attention to detail characterize all Spanish wood sculpture; it is usually polychromed, and, at times, provided with glass eyes, hair, and garments. Among the most important works of Spanish baroque sculpture are numerous carved wood retables (altar pieces), many of considerable size and richness, produced by sculptor-architects. Of these, Gregorio Fernández, who worked principally in Valladolid, was the major sculptor of central Spain, while the southern school is best represented by Juan Martínez Montañés and Juan de Mesa from Seville and Pedro de Mena and Alonso Cano working in Granada.

C

Spanish Baroque Architecture

Spanish architecture of the early baroque often continues the pattern of the muted severe style of the monastery-palace of El Escorial (1563-1582) near Madrid, as in the Buen Retiro Palace (begun 1631, now destroyed) in Madrid. Cano's facade for Granada Cathedral (designed 1667) contains classical elements but, in its surface decoration, points the way to the development of the rococo style. The most ornate baroque buildings are found in Andalucía. Seville's Hospital of Los Venerables Sacerdotes (1687-1697), designed by Leonardo de Figueroa, is typical. In the rest of the country the Churrigueresque style, a wildly exuberant baroque mode named for the Churriguera family of architects, is evident in richly adorned buildings in Barcelona, Madrid, and especially Salamanca.

D

Spanish Baroque in the New World

The art of the New World in the 17th century followed lines similar to that of the Iberian countries. Among the major centers in Spanish America were Mexico, Guatemala (especially the city of Antigua Guatemala), and Peru (Cuzco and Lima). The art of Brazil followed the patterns set by Portugal. In painting, the styles of Caravaggio, Zurbarán, and Murillo had tremendous impact. Paintings of the Cuzco school combined indigenous decorative forms with European-like figures. Sculptural decoration from native sources also served as an integral part of the interiors and exteriors of the hundreds of baroque churches constructed in a flamboyant and exaggerated Churrigueresque mode, in all parts of the Spanish colonies at this time.

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