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Mounted on a white steed and flanked by an angel bearing a flag, Saint James gallops over a multitude of fallen Moors and horses. The battle scene occupies a rocky landscape in the middle ground. This canvas is a sketch for the elliptical dome at the entrance to the Royal Palace’s chapel and was painted by Giaquinto between 1756 and 1757. The canvas and its corresponding fresco are clearly derived
Shortly after his arrival in Spain in 1753, Giaquinto embarked on a series of eight canvases on scenes from the Passion for the King’s Oratory in the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. The series also included the altarpiece, which depicted The Holy Trinity (P-5444). Christ is brought before Pilate who, seated in the background, aims to achieve a balance between his own opinion regarding the innocence
This is a preliminary study for a scene from the Trojan War, painted for an unknown decorative scheme in the Royal Palace or another royal residence in Madrid. Agamemnon is about to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that his fleet can reach Troy, as the Oracle told him. Moved by the sorrowing priests, warriors and companions of the young woman, whose innocence is emphasised by her white clothing
Standing on clouds at the center of the composition, Moses points toward the sunbeams shining down from the sky. Beneath him, Abraham and Isaac are accompanied by the sacrificial lamb. To the left of the composition, Saint Laurence and Saint Steven await the palm frond of martyrdom carried by angels; and to the right, we see the strong women of the Bible and King David.This composition belongs to
Vernet, who studied and lived in Rome between 1734 and 1753, offers a pre-Romantic vision of the imposing landscape near the city of Caprarola, located in the Cimini Hills in Lazio. The activities of the small figures, one of them fishing, convey the tranquillity of rural life. In 1814 the canvas was in the “green fireplace room” in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
Corrado Giaquinto had frequent contacts with Spain as of 1735 or earlier. But the death of Jacopo Amigoni in 1752 led to his being summoned to Madrid the next year. During his stay in the Spanish Court, he earned the highest honors given to a painter in that era. He became First Painter to the Court in August 1753 and director of the Academy of San Fernando that December. His main mission was the
This portrait presents the lady at full length, dressed in the fashion of the time in a tulle gown with lace details. Goya perfectly captures the translucence of the fabric, through which we see the shimmer of the pink skirt the sitter wears underneath. At her waist the lady wears a wide black tulle band, which is also semi-transparent, and on the waistband she has pinned a lovely cameo brooch. He
An accomplished heir to the Neapolitan tradition of Luca Giordano, Giaquinto reveals the extensive influence of Giordano’s figure types in this Adoration of the Shepherds. In the centre of the composition the infant Christ becomes a powerful source of radiated light which bathes the faces of the figures grouped around the manger.
The inscription on the sheet of paper on the table records that the sitter was nursemaid to one of Charles IV’s daughters, the Infanta María Amalia (1779-1798). A typical portrait of the period, it depicts an elderly sitter of elevated social rank due to her position at Court, wearing rich clothing and jewels that indicate her wealth. This canvas has also been attributed to Agustín E
Corrado Giaquinto had frequent contacts with Spain as of 1735 or earlier. But the death of Jacopo Amigoni in 1752 led to his being summoned to Madrid the next year. During his stay in the Spanish Court, he earned the highest honors given to a painter in that era. He became First Painter to the Court in August 1753 and director of the Academy of San Fernando that December. His main mission was the
On the reverse of this portrait is an old inscription in ink reading ‘MAESTRO QUINTIN’. Bosque attributed it to that artist in his catalogue, although emphasising the difference of technique between this work and that used for the old woman in The Temptations of Saint Anthony by Joachim Patinir and Quinten Massys (Madrid, Museo del Prado, P-1615), painted prior to 1522. He suggests that the presen
This canvas is one of a group of eight painted by Giaquinto shortly after his arrival in Spain in 1753. It was painted for the King’s Prayer Chamber in the Buen Retiro palace. The series was devoted to the Passion and this canvas depicts Christ in prayer with the Apostles asleep in the background and the soldiers advancing towards the garden of Gethsemane in the far distance.
The identification of this elderly gentleman sitting at a desk in his study is borne out by the inscription on the fore edge of the book he is writing in, which displays the words "rime del casellio". Giovanni Battista Caselli was a poet and medal engraver who enjoyed certain prominence in Cremona during his lifetime, though there is little reliable information about him today. Nevertheless, Casel
One of the few landscapes by Giaquinto, this canvas decorated the Infanta’s bedroom in the Buen Retiro palace. The monumental hunt recreates the classical world through a harmonious vision of nature in which the inclusion of the human presence reflects the norms of 17th-century classicising landscape and the works of Annibale Carracci and Nicolas Poussin.
Painted with remarkable delicacy, probably from life, in this panel Mengs captures the artless fascination with which the saint presents to the world the message of the Redeemer’s arrival, inscribed on the scroll. The figure’s soft luminosity reveals the influence of Correggio (1493-1534), which was decisive for the early years of Mengs’s Roman period.
This allegorical work, signed on the column lying on the ground in the centre of the composition, shows two women in Roman garb sitting on clouds. Representing Justice and Peace, they embrace and seem about to kiss each other. This pictorial motif could be used to express political peace or, as is the case here, to allude to the peaceful policies that characterised the reign of Ferdinand VI, for w
A Pietà made by this Neapolitan painter during his stay in Madrid (1753-1763). The group of Christ and the angel holding him corresponds to the fresco of the Holy Trinity in the chapel at Madrid’s Royal Palace, of which the Museo del Prado has a presentation sketch (P03204). A preparatory drawing of the figure of Christ is at the Museo di San Martino in Naples. Giaquinto had already used th
This relief or medallion and other three more (E000459, E000474 and E000472), are part of a set of twenty-eight (although a total of forty-four had been commissioned, not all of them were made). They were intended as decorations over the doors of the main-floor gallery at the Royal Palace. Their subjects follow an iconographic program developed by the Benedictine friar and well-known scholar, Fath
