XVI century art Spanish and Portuguese painting of the XVI century

1. Royal painting of the Pyrenees

Spanish painting of the XVI century, to which we owe Carla Justi more perfect knowledge, sought in vain to get rid of the Dutch-Italian style, which, thanks to fresh tributaries, received all the new food. Yet here, too, Italian works were gradually left in the shadow of the Netherlands.

As early as 1498, Isabella appointed the Dutch painter Juan de Flandes as her court painter, whose sixteen paintings from the life of Christ on the main altar of the cathedral in Valencia (1506–1512) still have an old-Dutch look. Juan de Borgogna (died about 1533), Felipe Vigarni’s brother, was already Italianized by the Netherlands, and his frescoes from the New Testament in the Chapter Room in Toledo resemble the Florentine school of Ghirlandaio. Peter Kempener (1503–1580) from Brussels, nicknamed by the Andalusians Pedro Campania, was also more Dutch in terms of internal content. His mourning, in the northern severe withdrawal from the Cross (1548) in the Seville Cathedral seems to be still a Dutch work, and a dry but expressive altar in 1553, with his best paintings: “Bringing Mary to the temple” and “Christ among the teachers”, already struggling with the Italian formulas of beauty. The great Utrecht portrait painter Antonio Moreau had a brief but strong influence on the court of Philip II.

Fig. 94. "Christ among the disciples"

Philip II called, however, to Spain mainly by Italian painters. Great masters, like Titian, sent only their paintings. Federico Zuccari (Zucchero) from Urbino and Luca Cambiazo from Genoa came themselves; Pellegrino Tibaldi, who worked for 9 years at Escorial and at the Madrid Palace, also personally arrived. The Spaniards were the brothers Bartolomeo and Vincenzo Carducci (Carducho) from Florence, of whom the first was (1560–1608) a student of Zucchiri and, together with Tibaldi, worked on the allegorical frescos of the Escorial library. Domenikos Theotokopoulos “el Greco”, Greek (circa 1548–1614), appears in his early Venetian works as a student of Titian and Tintoretto, and in Toledo since 1575 he developed that “impressionistic” style that influenced the development of Spanish painters XVII century. Therefore, below we will find him at their head.

Of the local Spanish painters, Fernando Gallegos of Salamanca (died in 1550) continued the Old Dutch style up to half a century, noticeable in his generally free and lively paintings in the cathedrals of Salamanca and Zamora. Ferrando Yanes de Almedina, a disciple of Leonardo da Vinci in 1504–1505 together with Ferrando de Llanos, sixteen Leonardian-style paintings from the life of the Virgin Mary in the main altar of the cathedral in Valencia, in Florence. Then comes the painter Alonso Berrugete, who, in his altar paintings in Coleggio de Sant Jago in Salamanca, wanted to get rid of Michelangelo’s influence as much as possible for him. He was younger than Luis de Vargas from Seville (1502–1568), who developed in Italy as a follower of Raphael and Andrea del Sarto. His “Nativity of Christ” (1555) was executed in a very pure form, the more mannered “Praying of the Patriarchs to the Virgin Mary” (1561) in the Seville Cathedral, but it is noteworthy that contemporaries called this picture for Adam’s impeccable angle of foot picture, just "la gamba" (leg). Vincente Juan Masíp, nicknamed Juan Juanes (c. 1507–1579), who had a similar position in Valencia as Vargas in Seville, was even younger. Intentional, and, moreover, somewhat angular Rafaelism of his numerous paintings, thanks to Spanish types and a brownish basic tone, almost unconsciously turns into something Spanish. His head of Christ with a high forehead, large cheekbones, full lips and deep burning eyes, conceived for the paintings of the Last Supper with the violent movements of the apostles (for example, in the museums of Madrid and Valencia), and then also for individual chest images (Madrid), there is still independent art creation. Finally, the youngest of these “novelists”, Pablo de Cespedes from Cordoba (1538–1618), who lived for a long time in Rome, completely renounced his Spanish nature and turned into an imitator of the “great manner” of Michelangelo. His Last Supper in a museum in Seville and the Assumption of the Virgin in the Madrid Academy is from Cordoba. Both pictures, however, seem to us cold and empty.

Juan Fernandez il Navarrete from Logrono (circa 1526–1579), who was physically handicapped — he was deaf-and-dumb — the nickname “el Mudo” represented the Venetian style among the Italian Spaniards of the 17th century. His "Baptism of the Lord" in the Madrid Museum shows, in addition, that he also belonged to the Romans in Rome. But after he was called upon by Philip II to decorate the Escorial with altar images, his eyes opened before Titian's brought works, and he gradually reached in his work the Venetian softness and brightness of colors that his six paired images of the apostles of the Escorial are breathing; The original Greek, Domenico Teotokopuli (c. 1548–1614), who was really a student of Titian in Venice, began to lay out in Spain, where he appeared in 1575, such new ways that we should rank him among the pioneers of the seventeenth century.

The two most typical Spanish painters of the 16th century, Morales and Coelho, represent, at the same time, the two main areas of Spanish painting: austerely suffering divine image and full of dignity, life and freshness portrait painting.

Luis Morales, "el divino", was descended from Badazoz, where he died in 1586 in extreme old age. His unpleasant, but deeply heartfelt, religious paintings, painted in a re-processed Old Dutch tradition, depict preferably the Grieving Mother of God and Christ in a crown of thorns. The elongated faces, thin limbs, angular movements of his figures are ugly, but particular tears, blood drops, penetrate the heart; the overall light brownish tone of his paintings with dark shadows is purely Spanish. There are a lot of his paintings in the museums of Madrid and Vienna; they are also in the Louvre, the Hermitage and in Dresden.

Alonso Sanches Coelho from Valencia, who died in 1593 in Madrid in extreme old age, took Antonio Moro as his model. His stately and simply conceived portraits of princes and princesses, animated more from the outside than internally, with well-written rich dresses, belong to the best for their time, if viewed from a certain distance; Of these portraits, the Madrid Museum owns eight, two Brussels. His students, like Juan Pantojo de la Cruz, are already in the transition to the XVII century.

2. The formation of Portuguese painting

The history of Portuguese painting is explained from the time of Raczynski by Robinson, Vasconcellos and Justi. Under Emanuele the Great and John III, Staroportugal painting continued to move along the Dutch fairway. Frey Carlos, the author of a series of paintings from the New Testament in the Lisbon Gallery, was a natural Dutchman. Portuguese painters, however, also studied in Antwerp. One of these masters should be called the master of Edward, a pupil of Quentin Maysys in 1504. Masters of this type should be attributed to some paintings of the Lisbon Gallery and St. John’s Church in Tomar. The Portuguese themselves ascribed earlier all the best paintings of this century to the master, whom they called Granio (Gran) Vasco and set next to the greatest masters of the whole world, “an example, perhaps the only one in the entire history of art, to coincide with the same semi-mythical name heterogeneous, as I put it once before. Rachinsky has already admitted that the most varied pictures of Dutch manners are attributed to him in the Lisbon Gallery. Of the distinctive names he proposed, such as “master of Setubal,” “master of the church of Our Lady,” etc., Yusti kept only the name of “master of Sayo Bento,” striking with his thin, mobile male figures with sunken cheeks, deep-seated eyes and sharp hawk noses. Four of his paintings from the Lisbon Gallery also come from the monastery of Saio Bento. He is a master of the strong expression of the Crucifixion in the sacristy of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, as well as half of a large series of paintings from the New Testament in the monastery church in Setubal. Next to him works, as he was under the influence of the Netherlands, the master, who identified himself on the "Descent of St. Of the Spirit ”in“ Santa Cruz ”in Coimbra by the name of Velasco. Since Vasco is the abbreviation of the name Velasco, and this master is, indeed, the most outstanding of the whole series, we can recognize in him originally Gran Vasco. In the Lisbon Gallery, he owns eight more images from the Life of the Virgin, six paintings for scenes from the Bible in Tomar, in the Setubal of the Annunciation, Christmas and the Resurrection of Christ. From the types of his companion from Sayo Bento, his figures are distinguished by compressed proportions and southern wide heads with large, wide-set eyes. The so-called painter from Vice, Vasco Fernandez, is significantly weaker; in the local cathedral there are paintings with his signature, apparently false, on biblical scenes. In contrast to all these masters, Vasco Pereira is already the Italian portuguese mannerist of the second half of the 16th century. Enough of sv. Onuphrius in 1538 of the Dresden Gallery, to show the lack of specificity in it. Portuguese painting had already outlived itself by the time when Spanish began to develop so independently that it seemed as if it was striving to surpass the art of all of Europe.