Seville: an historical and descriptive account of "the pearl of Andalusia"Calvert, Albert Frederick
History
Seville: an historical and descriptive account of "the pearl of Andalusia"
Calvert, Albert Frederick
Art -- Spain -- Seville; Painters -- Spain; Seville (Spain) -- Description and travel
demonstrative--spectacular movement, meaningless gestures, all done for
effect.
The Italian influence, the _buena manera_ it was called in Seville,
is more insistent in Luis de Vargas, whose painting was contemporary
with that of Campaña. He was the first painter of Seville to submit
himself wholly to Italy, and most often he was inspired by Raphael.
Much of his work has perished; of the once famous frescoes, “his
greatest gift to Seville,” nothing remains except a few colour traces
upon the Giralda Tower. De Vargas, the pupil probably of Perino del
Vagas, brought back as the reward of twenty-eight years of painting in
Italy much craft skill; and his work, as we see it in the “Pietà,” in
Santa Maria la Blanca, in the earlier “Nativity,” and, even more, in
his masterpiece, the popular “La Gamba,” both in the Cathedral, gives
us a borrowed art, academic and emotional. Only in portraiture does
he say what he has to say for himself. The portrait of Fernando de
Contreras, in the Sacristía de los Calices, is a portrait of sincerity
and character, in which is the Spanish insistence on detail, unpleasant
detail even, as in the ill-shaven cheeks rendered with such exact care.
Contrast this portrait with his other pictures, so extravagant, with
such futile gesticulation, to understand how a really capable painter
lost his sincerity, as just then it was lost in all Spanish painting.
In this effort to be Italian, De Vargas’ natural gift of reality, as we
see it, for instance, in the “Christ” of Santa Maria la Blanca, or in
the peasant boy of the Cathedral “Nativity,” was overclouded, mingled
curiously enough with a Raphaelesque sweetness. It was not that this
painter did not realise the scenes that he depicts--yes, and depicts
with passion--do we not know the sincere piety of his life?--but
he used to express them an art that was not his own, an art he was
temperamentally unfitted to understand.
Contemporary with Campaña and De Vargas, the leaders of the Andalusian
Mannerists, worked a band of painters of second, or even third-rate,
talent. Francisco Frutet, like Campaña a Flemish painter who had learnt
his art in Italy, and who came to Seville about 1548, is typical of
these “improvers,” as Pacheco calls them so mistakenly, of the native
art. His best work is his Triptych in the Museo, in which again we see
the same curious mingling of Flemish and Italian types; the Christ,
for instance, recalling the models of Italy, while Simon of Cyrene,
who bends beneath the Cross, is nearer to the Gothic figures. Pedro
Villegas Marmolejo has more interest. His quiet pleasing pictures--one
is in the Cathedral, one in San Pedro--interpret Italian art with more
charm, but still without originality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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