The Louvre: Fifty Plates in ColourBrockwell, Maurice W.
History
The Louvre: Fifty Plates in Colour
Brockwell, Maurice W.
Musée du Louvre
_The Holy Family_ (No. 1713), also known as _The Virgin of Seville_, is
a genuine and characteristic, though strangely overrated work by the
master, and bears the signature
BARTOLOM DE MURILLO F. HISPAN.
_The Virgin in Glory_ (No. 1711) is, to say the least, of doubtful
authenticity. The small companion pictures, _Christ in the Garden of
Olives_ (No. 1714) and _Christ at the Column and St. Peter_ (No. 1715),
are painted on marble, to which fact they owe the unpleasant coldness
of their colouring.
In the La Caze Room are two portraits, _The Poet Quevedo_ (No. 1718)
and _The Duke of Ossuña_ (No. 1719), which the official Catalogue
ascribes to Murillo. Quite apart from the fact that the artist was
only six years of age when the Duke of Ossuña died, the quality of
the painting does not justify these attributions. Like the head of
Philip IV. in the same room, they were probably painted by Escosura, a
late-nineteenth-century Spaniard
THE SCHOOL OF MADRID
We must now return to Madrid, where the example of Velazquez had
inspired a fairly numerous group of able painters without particular
genius, whose art, being entirely derivative, carried within itself
the germ of decay and sank to complete insignificance before the close
of the century. The most distinguished artist of this group is Juan
Bautista del Mazo, who has already been referred to as the author
of the _Meeting of Thirteen People_ and probably of the _Philip IV.
in Hunting Costume_. So well did he succeed in appropriating his
father-in-law’s style that his best works have frequently passed under
his illustrious master’s name.
Another important painter of the Madrid school is Carreño de Miranda
(Nos. 1614-1685), who benefited by Velazquez’s patronage, became
painter of the Palace in 1669, and Court Painter and Assistant
Seneschal in 1671. Although in his later years he devoted himself
largely to subject pictures which are distinguished by a warmer
colouring than most of the productions by the Madrid school of the
period, he achieved his greatest successes as a portrait painter. He
was considerably influenced by the paintings of Van Dyck, which he
had occasion to study in the royal palaces. His large _St. Ambrose
distributing Alms_ (No. 1702), in the La Caze Gallery, is a hurriedly
executed work which does not show his art to the best advantage. It
figured in the sale of the Soult collection, when it failed to realise
£20.
Far more typical of its author’s best manner is _The Burning Bush_ (No.
1703) by Francisco Collantes (1599-1656), a Madrid painter who studied
under Vincente Carducho, but was influenced by Bassano. He was an
excellent colourist, especially in his landscape paintings with small
figures. His most famous picture is _The Vision of Ezekiel_, formerly
at the Buen Retiro Palace and now in the Prado Gallery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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