Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.
Baroque architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style which appeared in Italy in the early 17th century and gradually spread across Europe. It was originally introduced by the Catholic Church, particularly by the Jesuits, as a means to combat the Reformation and the Protestant church with a new architecture that inspired surprise and awe. It reached its peak in the High Baroque (1625–1675), when it was used in churches and palaces in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Bavaria and Austria. In the Late Baroque period (1675–1750), it reached as far as Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America. In about 1730, an even more elaborately decorative variant called Rococo appeared and flourished in Central Europe.
José de Mora (1642–1724) was a Spanish sculptor.
The Spanish Golden Age was a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise of the Spanish Empire under the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs. The greatest patron of Spanish art and culture during this period was King Philip II (1556–1598). His royal palace, El Escorial, invited the attention of some of Europe's greatest architects and painters, such as El Greco, who infused Spanish art with foreign styles and helped create a uniquely Spanish style of painting. The period is associated with the reigns of Isabella I, Ferdinand II, Charles V, Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV, when Spain was at the peak of its power and influence in Europe and the world.
Francisco Pacheco del Río was a Spanish painter, best known as the teacher and father-in-law of Diego Velázquez and Alonzo Cano, and for his textbook on painting, entitled Art of Painting, that is an important source for the study of 17th-century practice in Spain. He is described by some as the "Vasari of Seville": vocal and didactic about his theories of painting and thoughts about painters, conventional and uninspired in his executions.
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, better known as Seville Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville, Andalusia, Spain. It was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along with the adjoining Alcázar palace complex and the General Archive of the Indies. It is one of the largest churches in the world as well as the largest Gothic church.
Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. Spanish art was particularly influenced by France and Italy during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics, partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain, and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.
Diego Siloe (anglicized) or Diego de Siloé was a Spanish Renaissance architect and sculptor, progenitor of the Granadan school of sculpture. He developed the majority of his work in Andalusia.
Spanish Renaissance architecture was that style of Renaissance architecture in the last decades of the 15th century. Renaissance evolved firstly in Florence and then Rome and other parts of the Italian Peninsula as the result of Renaissance humanism and a revived interest in Classical architecture. In Spain, the Renaissance began to be grafted to Gothic forms as mathematicians and engineers rediscovered building as one of the technological sciences. In the time of King Felipe II (1556–1589), the Renaissance influence expanded throughout the territory thanks to the dissemination of architectural treatises.
Baroque sculpture is the sculpture associated with the Baroque style of the period between the early 17th and mid 18th centuries. In Baroque sculpture, groups of figures assumed new importance, and there was a dynamic movement and energy of human forms—they spiralled around an empty central vortex, or reached outwards into the surrounding space. Baroque sculpture often had multiple ideal viewing angles, and reflected a general continuation of the Renaissance move away from the relief to sculpture created in the round, and designed to be placed in the middle of a large space—elaborate fountains such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini‘s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, or those in the Gardens of Versailles were a Baroque speciality. The Baroque style was perfectly suited to sculpture, with Bernini the dominating figure of the age in works such as The Ecstasy of St Theresa (1647–1652). Much Baroque sculpture added extra-sculptural elements, for example, concealed lighting, or water fountains, or fused sculpture and architecture to create a transformative experience for the viewer. Artists saw themselves as in the classical tradition, but admired Hellenistic and later Roman sculpture, rather than that of the more "Classical" periods as they are seen today.
Colombian art has 3500 years of history and covers a wide range of media and styles ranging from Spanish Baroque devotional painting to Quimbaya gold craftwork to the "lyrical americanism" of painter Alejandro Obregón (1920–1992). Perhaps the most internationally acclaimed Colombian artist is painter and sculptor Fernando Botero (1932).
The Sevillian school of sculpture—the tradition of Christian religious sculpture in Seville, Andalusia, Spain—began in the 13th century, formed a clear tradition of its own in the 16th century, and continues into the present. The sculptures are generally worked in wood in a technique known as encarnación.
The Granadan school of sculpture or Granadine school of sculpture—the tradition of Christian religious sculpture in Granada, Andalusia, Spain—began in the 16th century and constituted a clear tradition of its own by the 17th century. The extraordinary artistic activity of Renaissance Granada brought artists to that city from various regions of Spain and from other parts of Europe.
Felipe Bigarny, also known as Felipe Vigarny, Felipe Biguerny or Felipe de Borgoña, etc. and sometimes referred to as El Borgoñón, was a sculptor born in Burgundy (France) but who made his career in Spain and was one of the leading sculptors of the Spanish Renaissance. He was also an architect.
Domenico Fancelli (1469–1519) was an Italian sculptor who worked primarily in Spain, where he was one of those who introduced Renaissance art. His most notable works are the tomb of Cardinal Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, in the Cathedral of Seville, and the tombs of the Catholic Monarchs in the Royal Chapel of Granada.
Bartolomé Ordóñez was a Spanish Renaissance sculptor.
Roque Balduque was a sculptor and maker of altarpieces. Born at an unknown date in Bois-le-Duc, he is known for his work in Spain in the last years of his life.
Pedro Roldán (1624–1699) was a Baroque sculptor from Seville, Andalusia, Spain. His daughter Luisa Roldán, known as La Roldana, was also a major figure of Spanish Baroque sculpture.
Purism is an initial phase of Renaissance architecture in Spain, which took place between 1530 and 1560, after Isabelline Gothic and prior to the Herrerian architecture in the last third of the 16th century. The name "Prince Philip" refers to the period in which Philip II of Spain had not yet received the inheritance of the Spanish Monarchy by abdication of his father, the Emperor Charles V (1556). The name "Serlian" is due to the influential architect and treatise Sebastiano Serlio.
Renaissance sculpture is understood as a process of recovery of the sculpture of classical antiquity. Sculptors found in the artistic remains and in the discoveries of sites of that bygone era the perfect inspiration for their works. They were also inspired by nature. In this context we must take into account the exception of the Flemish artists in northern Europe, who, in addition to overcoming the figurative style of the Gothic, promoted a Renaissance foreign to the Italian one, especially in the field of painting. The rebirth of antiquity with the abandonment of the medieval, which for Giorgio Vasari "had been a world of Goths", and the recognition of the classics with all their variants and nuances was a phenomenon that developed almost exclusively in Italian Renaissance sculpture. Renaissance art succeeded in interpreting Nature and translating it with freedom and knowledge into a multitude of masterpieces.
