The Story of Spanish Painting

by Charles H. Caffin

S. STEPHEN CONDUCTED TO MARTYRDOM	JUAN DE JUANES
THE PRADO

while numbers 8 and 9 represent the commencement of native feeling. Compare, for instance, the face of the woman who kneels on the left of the foreground in S. Gregory Saying Mass with those of the women in the high upright panel of the earlier series. The latter have a Flemish roundness of features and rather dull expression, whereas the face in the Gregory picture, narrows toward the chin and has something of the spiritual intensity which in the next century will be brought to its highest pitch of expression by El Greco. In fact, although Spain borrowed motives and methods from abroad, the inspiration remained her own and imprinted a native character on the product.

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This is still apparent in the art of the sixteenth century when there poured into Spain a steady flow of Italian influence. Its general tendency was to produce a number of so-called “mannerists,” Spanish painters who experimented with and imitated the style of the Italian masters, particularly of the Florentines, Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo. It was a necessary stage through which Spanish art had to graduate in order to acquire facility in drawing, chiaroscuro and the principles of composition. But it is not a period on which the student who is interested in art as a living expression will care to dwell. He will look upon it as probationary and merely preparatory for the later liberty of national and individual expression. Yet he may glance over it and see how even here the yeast of the national genius is fermenting the mass of borrowed and affected manners.

An example of this is afforded by the work of Juan de Juanes, one of the early names of prominence in the School of Valencia. The S. Stephen Conducted to Martyrdom, reproduced on page [44], is an illustration of his style. It forms one of a series, connected with the life of S. Stephen, which is now in the basement galleries of the Prado. It is not difficult to detect in these paintings the influence of Raphael. So noticeable is it, that Cean Bermudez, the chronicler of early Spanish art, assumes that Juanes must have been a pupil of the Florentine master. Subsequent research, however, has discovered that the Valencian painter was not born until 1523, three years after Raphael’s death. However he may have acquired a knowledge of the latter’s style, it is evident what it did for him and, through him, for the other painters of the Valencian school and the closely affiliated school of Andalusia. Comparing this picture with the earlier ones, reproduced in these pages, one observes in it a far more varied, facile and accurate skill in drawing, and that the composition, while it has lost the charm of naturalness, has gained in science. It is organisé, as the French say, a carefully assembled structure of inter-related parts, locked together into an ensemble. On the other hand, to anticipate the sequence of our story, this artificial unity will have to be digested before its principles can be adjusted to the naturalistic presentation which is to be the peculiar quality of Spanish art. Meanwhile we can see the naturalistic tendency already forming. The fine head, immediately behind the Saint’s, is that of a Spanish gentleman of the period. All the heads, in fact, are of local types, and the exaggeration of action in the figures and of emotion in the faces, is characteristic of a nation so dramatically disposed as the Spanish, while the excess of humility in the demeanour of the Saint is characteristic of the devotional attitude of this painter toward his art. For he, like many others among the Spanish artists, is said to have painted only sacred subjects and to have prepared his spirit for the task by partaking of the Sacrament.

Another picture which helps to throw a light upon this period of Italian imitation is the Descent from the Cross by Pedro Campaña (page [51]). This painter was born in Brussels in 1503. But, though of Flemish origin, he gained his knowledge of art in Rome, whence he passed to Spain, living in Seville for twenty-four years, until his death in 1580. Thus he was an important factor in the transitionary development of the School of Andalusia. Murillo particularly admired this picture, and at his own request was buried beneath it in the Church of Santa Cruz. When the latter was pulled down, the picture was removed to the Cathedral, where it now hangs in the Sacristy. Its indebtedness to Raphael is apparent in the group of figures at the foot of the Cross, while a Peruginesque influence is suggested in the draperies of the men upon the ladders and in the placing of their figures against the sky. But also evident is the artificiality of the whole. The gestures and expression of the women are affected; quite inadequate is the support which is being given to the Sacred Body, while the attitude of the latter is too obviously regulated with the double intention of securing certain lines in the composition and of introducing the suggestion of forgiveness of the Magdalen. In fact, the chief virtue of the picture seems to be its extremely handsome composition, which must be admitted to have great nobility as well as a fine organic simplicity. The picture, indeed, is an achievement of science; valuable for its enforcement of academic principles; yet, even so, the work, not of a master, but a manneristic imitator.

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