Spanish Portraits in the Prado: From El Greco to Sorolla

Espacio Cultural de CajaCanarias. Santa Cruz de Tenerife 10/1/2010 - 1/8/2011

Spanish Portraits in the Prado. From El Greco to Sorolla presents an overview of a genre that is essential for gaining a proper understanding of Spanish painting. Seventy-three oil paintings, selected from the Prado’s vast collection of portraits, reveal the extraordinary quality, variety and appeal that this genre has enjoyed in our country from its appearance in the Renaissance until the late nineteenth century.

In Spain, portraiture as an independent genre emerged in the context of the court, where it served to immortalise the king and his family, conveying not only their physical traits but also a complex concept of state, dynasty and society. From the mid-1500s, court portraits almost always gave the Spanish Habsburgs the same solemn, serious, aloof appearance, regardless of sex or age. All additional elements (backdrop, furniture, attire, jewellery, armour and weapons) were included to reinforce that image of power and authority, giving rise to stereotypical formulas that endured into well into the eighteenth century, although the Bourbon dynasty brought new customs to court upon ascending to the Spanish throne in 1700.

The show describes the genre’s stylistic development, types of portraits and the different social meanings that portraiture has had in Spain. This genre was cultivated by the most important Spanish painters—El Greco,  Sánchez Coello, Velázquez, Carreño de Miranda, Murillo, Goya, Vicente López, Federico de Madrazo and Sorolla—as well as by some of the leading European painters who had ties to our country at some point, beginning with Titian and Anthonis Mor, who laid the foundations of the court portrait in Spain.

In the nineteenth century, the growing importance and prosperity of middle-class buyers led to an increase in portrait production and tempted many of the finest painters to embrace the genre. In the first third of the century, Goya’s genius was accompanied by Vicente López’s technical brilliance and the rigours of neoclassicism. The second third unveiled the splendour of Romanticism, particularly in Seville and Madrid, through the work of figures like Antonio María Esquivel and Federico de Madrazo. In the final decades of the 1800s, the paintings of Raimundo de Madrazo, Ignacio Pinazo and Joaquín Sorolla, among others, led the way to realism and naturalism. A very clear leitmotif shows that, throughout the century, portraitists looked to the traditions of the Spanish Golden Age, and particularly to Velázquez, a magnet for the majority of artists, especially since the founding of the Prado in 1819.

It is quite interesting to note the variety of types, some of which—royal and equestrian portraits, for example—had declined in popularity, while others—like self-portraits, group and family portraits, and children’s portraits—steadily gained ground throughout the century. All this proves that portraits are a valuable and faithful reflection of society’s transformations over that hundred-year period. Moreover, in the second half of the 1800s, photographic portraiture led to significant changes in conventions of representation.

Curator:: Leticia Ruiz Gómez, Senior Curator Spanish Painting before 1700 Department, and Javier Barón, Senior Curator Nineteenth-Century Painting Department

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The Origins of Portraiture at Court

The mid-sixteenth century was a turning point for court portraiture, whose emergence was closely connected to the purposes and interests of the Spanish monarch and the Habsburg dynasty. The basic prototypes of this genre were established during the reigns of Charles V and Philip II. Spanish court portraits were formally austere images that had to capture each individual’s features while also clearly conveying their position and status.

Titian was responsible for devising the principal models, although Anthonis Mor also played a key role in that process. The Flemish artist was known for his painstaking, understated execution and dramatic use of light that made the sitter’s royal presence even more impressive, but he continued to employ Titian’s most important iconographic inventions. During the reign of Philip II, Alonso Sánchez Coello and his disciple Juan Pantoja de la Cruz definitively cemented this concept of the court portrait, which would endure until the late eighteenth century.

Portraiture in Toledo

Throughout Europe, the evolution of portraiture went hand-in-hand with the expansion of cities. Urban and social development made Toledo one of the most prominent cities in Iberia. There is but a single extant portrait by Juan Sánchez Cotán, one of the finest Spanish still-life painters: The Bearded Lady of Peñaranda, an eloquent example of the subgenre of images devoted to portraying ‘freaks’ of nature.

The greatest portraitist in Toledo was undoubtedly El Greco, who left us a gallery of Castilian gentlemen that fairly exude expressive authenticity and inner strength. These portraits are connected to the Venetian school and, for many years, were considered the finest representation of Toledo society. There seems to be something of the Cretan artist’s intense vision in two portraits by Luis Tristán and Juan Bautista Maíno, although both opted for the naturalistic novelties introduced in the first quarter of the seventeenth century.

The Seventeenth Century

As the painter responsible for the king’s portraits, Velázquez wholeheartedly embraced the traditions established by his predecessors, which were already enshrined as shining symbols of dynasty continuity. But the Sevillian painter’s dazzling talent revitalised those precedents so effectively that Velázquez and his oeuvre became the most enduring model for subsequent generations. This is apparent in the portraits of Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, Juan Carreño de Miranda and the Italian Luca Giordano, who modelled his equestrian portraits of Charles II and Maria Anna of Neuburg on Velázquez’s depictions of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria.

Visitors to the show can admire the portrait of Nicolás Omazur, a wealthy merchant and art collector who settled in Seville, the busiest, most prosperous city in mainland Spain. This work eloquently illustrates the genre’s spread to other sectors of society, despite being considered a tool that should only be used to preserve the memory of individuals of the highest status or proven moral rectitude.

The section includes portraits by other excellent painters of the 1600s, like José Antolínez and Juan Carreño de Miranda, exponents of the high Baroque style whose pictures prioritised lively colours and dynamic compositions.

The Eighteenth Century

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Bourbons had their own style of representation. French traditions can be traced in a portrait by Louis-Michel van Loo and the pair of royal effigies by Spanish artist Miguel Jacinto Meléndez. These works are dominated by a sense of courtly elegance and vivacity which flouted the traditional Spanish preference for expressive sobriety.

Another important step in the Spanish monarchy's gradual assimilation of European art trends was bringing German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, the most refined European portraitist of the mid-1700s, to Madrid. This painter was able to tone down the pompous grandeur of French portraitists without sacrificing vitality or sophistication. He had a notable influence on many Spanish artists, including Francisco de Goya, who cleverly revived the basic components of the Spanish court portrait. Velázquez’s spirit of assertiveness and the ‘national painting’ tradition underlie many official portraits.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, portraiture spread to more levels of society, and one of the chief innovations in the genre was that artists began to represent not only the sitter’s physical traits and social status but also their character and personality.

First Third of the Nineteenth Century

As Goya’s style evolved over the years leading up to his death in 1828, his introspective portraits and free, expressive technique represented a modern foreshadowing of both Romanticism and realism. Echoes of his painting are apparent in the portraits of Agustín Esteve and José Ribelles.

Trained in the eighteenth-century tradition, Zacarías González Velázquez produced excellent compositions with his own personal interpretation of classicism. But Vicente López was, after Goya, the greatest portraitist of the first half of the century. With a highly personal style and amazing talent for capturing detail, he never stopped evolving, from the late Baroque echoes of his early portraits to the timid Romanticism of his final likenesses.

The international neoclassical style, characterised by rigorous draughtsmanship and compositional clarity, is represented by two of Jacques-Louis David’s students, José Aparicio and José de Madrazo. In a late work, Madrazo replaced his cool palette with warmer tones, something that can also be seen, along with an intense sense of realism, in the portraits of Rafael Tegeo, heralding the imminent arrival of the Romantic style.

Romanticism

Romanticism was quite important in Seville, where Murillo had a decisive influence on José Gutiérrez de la Vega, José María Romero and Antonio María Esquivel, who obtained a relevant position at court. These artists introduced very significant types within the genre, such as group, family and child portraits, which were also practised by Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer.

In Madrid, the legacy of Goya and the Spanish Golden Age made itself felt in the portraits of Leonard Alenza. Federico de Madrazo and Carlos Luis de Ribera soon made a name for themselves as outstanding portraitists. Though trained in the Nazarene-influenced ‘purist’ style and 1830s French painting, whose influence is still apparent in the latter’s balanced oval portraits, they managed to evolve over the course of their lengthy careers. Madrazo, an attentive student of French portraiture and Velázquez, became influential (as his father had before him) thanks to his prominent position at the academy’s school of painting, sculpture and engraving. With numerous works to his name, Madrazo’s talents made him the most renowned artist at court and the favourite portraitist of the nobility and haute bourgeoisie.

Realism and Naturalism

The French painters of this time influenced Spanish artists who spent long periods abroad in Paris, like José Casado and Raimundo de Madrazo, Federico’s son, a renowned society portraitist. Another outstanding figure was José Villegas, a painter from Seville who produced numerous self-portraits that denote the influence of Velázquez, whose works he studied at the Prado.

This period was also remarkable for the Valencian painters who, working from a realism based, as in Francisco Domingo’s case, on the study of Ribera and Velázquez, produced intuitively vivacious and adroitly colourful portraits. This was true of Emilio Sala who, like Domingo, painted in Paris and Madrid. Ignacio Pinazo, the author of highly expressive self-portraits, captured an intimacy that was at once truthful and subtle in his likenesses of children.

Joaquín Sorolla was the great portraitist of naturalism in Spain. He interpreted Velázquez’s legacy in his works with modern intuition and long, vigorous brushstrokes, using colour and light to achieve truly wondrous effects that immediately and accurately captured his subjects.