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.
Juan de Arellano (1614–1676), the painter of the Flowers (No. 1701), worked at Madrid, unknown and in abject poverty, until at the age of thirty-six he began to devote himself to flower-painting, a branch of art in which he developed considerable skill, and rose to great popularity.
Yet another Madrid painter who is but indifferently represented at the Louvre by a still life of Fruit and Musical Instruments (No. 1720) in the La Caze collection, is Antonio Pereda (1599–1669). Although a contemporary of Velazquez and working in the same city, he was not appreciably influenced by that master. He was a pupil of Pedro de las Cuevas, and his style shows certain affinities with Ribera. His works are rarely to be met with outside the galleries and churches of his own country.
The end of the seventeenth century marked the complete decadence of the Spanish school, which was precipitated and received its final seal by the advent in 1692 of the Neapolitan Luca Giordano, whose rare facility in the production of showy, flashy, meretricious works earned for him the sobriquet “Fa Presto,” and whose prodigious success was a powerful incentive to emulation. More fatal even than the influence of Luca Giordano was that of the German artist Raphael Mengs, an uninspired eclectic who became Court Painter to Charles iii., and who is referred to in the chapter dealing with the German pictures at the Louvre.