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Pinazo, an artist obsessed with his own image, painted numerous self-portraits, some showing him with a hat. In these works, he rendered his expressive facial features with naturalist exactitude against very sober backgrounds. The gaze of the eye in the lighted half of the face here reflects his efforts to capture the image directly and precisely, something his ample brushwork accomplishes with as
This painting and its companion, The Patrician’s Dream (P994), are among Murillo’s most renowned works. The two arched works were intended to hang beneath a small dome in the recently remodeled Sevillian church of Santa María la Blanca in 1665, and they narrate the story of the founding of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore as succinctly set out in the Roman Breviary’s information a
On the shore, Saint Francis receives a young man dressed in a black habit, ruff collar and hat, whom Christ carries over the water. In the background: a boat and an embankment with two figures.This canvas is from the Carmelite convent of San Hermenegildo in Madrid, where, without describing it, Ponz lists it as a work by Cabezalero paired with another, now at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, that i
Sorolla was the most gifted Spanish painter of his generation, excelling in portraiture. In the early years of the twentieth century, and especially after the encouragement of winning the Grand Prize in the 1900 Exposition Universelle Paris, he demonstrated the influence of Velázquez through the use of long, confident brushstrokes. This portrait of María de Figueroa y Bermejillo -the
For Sorolla and his wife, the time spent in Italy formed part of the years at the beginning of their relationship when they confronted their first difficulties together. As late as 1915, nearly thirty years after this trip, Sorolla noted in a letter to his wife that he had ‘ordered a little frame for the Virgin you gave me when I left Spain to study in Rome. I think it looks good on it and will ma
In 1901, Sorolla and Jiménez Aranda painted portraits of each other. They had known each other since the early 1890s, successively occupied the same study in Madrid, and it was the painter from Seville who introduced Sorolla into the costumbrism painting of Mariano Fortuny. The Valencian artist, here at the age of 38, is portrayed hard at work, wearing his smock and bearing his tools, namel
In this presentation of the Virgin breastfeeding the Christ Child, Morales discreetly avoids showing her naked breast, in line with his habitual practice. Through the restlessness of the Christ Child, seen from behind as he seeks his mother’s consoling breast, and Mary’s pensive expression the artist suggests the infant’s redemptive fate.
Ligozzi painted numerous allegories on death and the vices, using a macabre and morbid language that included skeletons and hourglasses. In works of this type the artist employed his imagination and profound knowledge of nature to express a deeply-felt and personal religiosity, evident in details such as the serpent, the butterfly wings and the personification of Sin.
At the time this painting was executed the palace of Coudenberg was the seat of the court of the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia in Brussels. This lively depiction of the palace and its surroundings was painted by artists in their service.
The woman seated at the back of the carriage is an open allusion to the famous parricide immortalised by Sorolla in his painting Another Marguerite!! (Saint Louis, Missouri, Kemper Art Museum). With a repressed expression that evidences a certain guilt, the young woman looks at the wet nurse in the foreground, one of those women who were subsidised by the State to nurse the children in foundling h
This painting and its companion, The Patrician Reveals his Dream to the Pope (P995), are among Murillo’s most renowned works. The two arched works were intended to hang beneath a small dome in the recently remodeled Sevillian church of Santa María la Blanca in 1665, and they narrate the story of the founding of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore as succinctly set out in the Roman Br
Oblivious to vindications of the intellectual and spiritual dimension of women, Raimundo de Madrazo continued to explore the sophistication of their external appearance, adjusting his portraits of his female clients to a fashion that called amidst the rise of the Suffragette movement for a return to the values and aesthetics of the eighteenth century. It was especially successful among the women o
Francisco Domingo approaches the work of Diego Velasquez (1500-1600) in a free reinterpretation of the human types painted by that artist from Seville. A group of hunters take a rest during a hunt. All of them are dressed in seventeenth-century style. The group of three men at the left of the composition recalls the gentlemen in Velasquez´s works, and the composition of the dark horse held by a hu
Retrato de Víctor Balaguer i Cirera (Barcelona, 1824-Madrid, 1901), escritor, historiador y político. Fue, además, ministro de Ultramar (1871, 1874 y 1886-1888) y de Fomento (1872). Aunque fue miembro de la Sociedad Abolicionista Española, él defendía una abolición gradual de la esclavitud. Esta obra fue pintada para el Museo-Biblioteca de Ultramar y reproduce el retrato de la medalla realizada en
Retrato de Luis Álvarez Catalá (Madrid, 1836-1901), pintor que estuvo estrechamente vinculado al Museo del Prado, del que fue sucesivamente Secretario, Subdirector y Director. A diferencia de lo que ocurría con otros directores, el Museo no conservaba retrato suyo. Por ello, tiene interés esta efigie realizada, además, durante el ejercicio de su dirección, con motivo del hecho más sobresaliente en
The picture shows some children from the sanatorium of Santa Clara, founded in 1901 by Dr Tolosa Latour, bathing on the beach at Chipiona. Both the form and the message of the composition are clearly indebted to Sorolla’s Sad Inheritance! (Valencia, Colección Bancaja), as it too denounces the dire consequences for children’s health of the ill habits of their parents, whose subsequent physic
The most famous of Esquivel´s pieces and a leading work of Spanish Romanticism. Considered the maximum graphical testimony to the intellectual atmosphere during the reign of Isabel II (1830 - 1904), this canvas depicts a fictitious meeting of Esquivel´s most relevant cultural contemporaries. The composition combines the complexities of a group portrait with the scheme of Flemish Baroque cabinet po
An image of Venus in the nude, lying on a green velvet divan with pillows and a spread. Legend would have it that this was the Duchess of Alba, but the sitter has also been identified as Pepita Tudó, who became Godoy´s mistress in 1797. It is listed for the first time in 1800 as hanging over a door in Manuel Godoy´s palace, but without its companion, The Clothed Maja (P00741). In 1808 it is
