José del Castillo

Born into a modest family, he attended drawing classes offered by the Committee for the Preparation of the Founding of the Academy of San Fernando. There, he became a protege of José Carvajal y Lancaster, minister to Ferdinand VI, who assigned him a pension to visit Italy (1751). He moved to Rome to study with Corrado Giaquinto, whom he accompanied to Madrid in 1753. There, he maintained his relation with his teacher while participating in the recently founded Academy's contests. This earned him a new grant to return to Italy, where he remained from 1757 through 1764. After returning to Spain he sought work at the Palace and joined the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara under the direction of Mengs. At first his cartoons were based on compositions by Giordano and Giaquinto, but years later he began painting hunting scenes and popular types from Madrid whose singular charm sometimes recalls a younger Goya. His religious compositions oscillate between the elegant, graceful rococo he had learned from Giaquinto and a balanced if rather cold classicism that recalls Mengs's postulates (Luna, J. J., El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 159).