He is known to have signed an apprenticeship contract with well-known painter Luis Tristán in Toledo when he was fourteen years old (1619). That explains his strong tenebrist approach, which decidedly [+]
He learned art in Seville with Pedro Díaz de Villanueva (1614), but was undoubtedly friendly with Pacheco and Velázquez as well. History views him as the quintessential monastic painter, absolutely in [+]
The son of a musician from His Majesty's Chamber, this Spanish painter became a chamber usher in 1621. He trained as a court portrait painter with Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and became one of his most sk [+]
He was a Flemish painter who specialised in cabinet painting with a wide range of themes; from landscape to depictions of art galleries. Born into a Protestant family, he emigrated to Middelburg in hi [+]
He was the ninth child of a wealthy family from Leiden. His father, Harmen Gerritsz. van Rijn, came from a family of millers who had settled in the city and who adopted the nickname Van Rijn since the [+]
The artist was born in a small town in the Duchy of Lorraine, an independent territory in the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, a century and a half before it became part of France. A baker's son, he is doc [+]
During his life, Luca Giordano enjoyed a popularity in both Italy and Spain that plummeted after his death, due to two prejudices that have lasted until quite recently. The first was an association of [+]
The most important early-17th-century Flemish painter after Rubens, Van Dyck was considered Rubens’ equal by the 18th century. Born in Antwerp, the Spanish Netherlands’ main mercantile and cultural ce [+]
A total lack of documentary references means this artist's biography has had to be reconstructed on the basis of period references to him. He worked in Madrid, and Palomino considered him a "native" o [+]
This Italian painter had a fecund and influential career at court in Madrid, especially with religious works whose initial Counter-Reformation classicism evolved towards a sometimes highly intense nat [+]
He was a disciple of his father, Italian painter Patricio Cajés, who had moved to Madrid to work on the monastery of El Escorial. He is thought to have spent time in Rome around 1595, where he would h [+]
He must have been quite young when he arrived in Madrid and became a disciple of Carreño, as he is mentioned as a "master painter" living in Carreño's house in 1666. Among his very few known works are [+]