Spain -- Description and travel; Spain -- Social life and customs
In that stirring age the emigration was not all in one direction. Many
distinguished foreigners came down to Spain, to profit by the new love
of art in the Peninsula. It was Philip of Burgundy who carved, with
Berruguete, those miracles of skill and patience we admire to-day in the
choir of Toledo. Peter of Champagne painted at Seville the grand
altar-piece that so comforted the eyes and the soul of Murillo. The wild
Greek bedouin, George Theotocopouli, built the Mozarabic chapel and
filled the walls of convents with his weird ghost-faces. Moor, or Moro,
came from the Low Countries, and the Carducci brothers from Italy, to
seek their fortunes in Madrid. Torrigiani, after breaking Michael
Angelo's nose in Florence, fled to Granada, and died in a prison of the
Inquisition for smashing the face of a Virgin which a grandee of Spain
wanted to steal from him.
These immigrations, and the refluent tide of Spanish students from
Italy, founded the various schools of Valentia, Toledo, Seville, and
Madrid. Madrid soon absorbed the school of Toledo, and the attraction of
Seville was too powerful for Valentia. The Andalusian school counts
among its early illustrations Vargas, Roelas, the Castillos, Herrera,
Pacheco, and Moya, and among its later glories Velazquez, Alonzo Cano,
Zurbaran, and Murillo, last and greatest of the mighty line. The school
of Madrid begins with Berruguete and Na-varrete, the Italians Caxes,
Rizi, and others, who are followed by Sanchez Coello, Pantoja,
Collantes. Then comes the great invader Velazquez, followed by his
retainers Pareja and Carreno, and absorbs the whole life of the school.
Claudio Coello makes a good fight against the rapid decadence. Luca
Giordano comes rattling in from Naples with his whitewash-brush,
painting a mile a minute, and classic art is ended in Spain with the
brief and conscientious work of Raphael Mengs.
There is therefore little distinction of schools in Spain. Murillo, the
glory of Seville, studied in Madrid, and the mighty Andalusian,
Velazquez, performed his enormous life's work in the capital of Castile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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