Lecture 36: Baroque Painting in Spain

Baroque Painting in Spain ..............................................................

Lecture 36

The 17th century in Spain was one of weakened power and political

inÀ uence, including the loss of the northern Netherlands, but it also

witnessed Spain’s Golden Age of Art, culminating in one of the greatest

painters in a European century full of them: Diego Velázquez.

I

n this lecture, we examine the unique distortions of form of El Greco,

the light-dark contrasts of Francisco de Zurbarán, the affecting painting

of Murillo, and the brilliant illusionism and unique interpretations of

Velázquez. We move from Rome to Spain. Isabel of Castile and Fernando

of Aragon had succeeded in conquering the Moorish presence in Spain in

1492 and, after the ¿ rst voyages of Columbus under their patronage, had

opened the new world to both wealth and potential converts. These monarchs

established the Spanish Inquisition, which together with the much older papal

inquisition, would become the enforcement arm of the Counter-Reformation.

Spain became an intensely pious Catholic country, as well as the wealthiest

nation in Europe. The 17th century saw Spanish power and political inÀ uence

weakened, but it also witnessed Spain’s golden age of art, culminating in one

of the greatest painters of the century, Diego Velázquez.

We will begin at the end of the 16th century with El Greco (1541–1614),

a foreign-born, foreign-trained master, who forged his idiosyncratic style

from the dominant European currents. El Greco was born Domenico

Theotocopoulos in Crete; although he has become known as “the Greek,”

he always signed himself by his full Greek name, a fact that attests to his

cosmopolitanism. Crete was then under Venetian domination. Thus, although

El Greco was probably trained in the Byzantine stylistic tradition, he went to

Venice for further training. There, he was inÀ uenced by Titian and Tintoretto;

he traveled to Rome in 1570 and to Spain in 1577. El Greco settled in

Toledo, where both church commissions and the private patronage of the

intellectuals who were a prominent feature of the city satis¿ ed his needs for

the rest of his life. The artist was not astigmatic. We have seen enough Italian

Mannerism to understand that El Greco’s distortions of form were part of his

style, although given his own particular emphasis and exaggeration.