Striking contrasts belong to the history of art in the seventeenth century. A moral, religious, and artistic contrast existed between the academicians and the naturalists; and one as remarkable may be noticed between the French and Spanish schools of painting, corresponding, in fact, to the civil struggle between the two nations for European supremacy. In Spain the enthusiasm for art harmonized with the passionate character of the people; in France, discretion and intellectual taste predominated. The sensuous and rudely natural in Spanish art was combined with the warmest glow of religious feeling.
Velasquez, a son of Andalusia, had a number of scholars in Madrid among ladies of high rank. Donna Maria de Abarca and the Countess of Vill’ Ambrosa were celebrated for their skill in taking likenesses, and were highly praised by the poets. The Duchess of Bejar, Teresa Sarmiento, and Maria de Guadalupe, Duchess of Aveiro—also an accomplished linguist and lover of letters—had considerable celebrity as painters. The admiration of Philip IV. for art rendered the instruction therein of the royal children and those of the nobility a necessary branch of education. The Duchess of Alba, celebrated for her beauty and intrigues, gave one of Raphael’s master-pieces as a fee to the family physician, who had cured her of a dangerous illness.
Maria Eugenia de Beer was an engraver in Madrid, and we may find in the choir-books of the cathedral at Tarragona creditable specimens of the talent of the painter Angelica, who painted the illuminations with great neatness and skill.
Every city in the south of Spain seemed to be able to boast of a female artist. In Valencia lived Doña Isabella Sanchez Coello, the daughter and pupil of “the Spanish Prothogenes”—Alonzo Sanchez Coello—the first of the great Spanish portrait painters, and the Velasquez of the court of Philip II. Born in 1564, she was the playmate of Infants and Infantas, and she acquired distinction both in music and painting. She married Don Francisco de Herrera, Knight of Santiago. Dying in Madrid in 1612, she was buried with her husband’s family in the church of San Juan.
Magdalena Gilarte was a noted painter, and worked in her father’s style with spirit and skill. Jesualda Sanchez carried on her husband’s business after his death, and painted small pictures of the saints for sale.
In Granada we find Doña Maria Cueva Benavides y Barrados an admired painter, and Anna Heylan an engraver in copper. In Cordova, Doña Francisca Palomino y Velasco, the sister of the painter and art historian of the same name. She flourished about the close of the century.
THE SCULPTRESS OF SEVILLE.
To the school of Seville, in which Spanish art reached its highest development, belongs a fair artist of repute. Luisa Roldan was known as an excellent sculptor in wood. She was born in 1656, and profited by her father’s instructions in art, acquiring great skill. After her mother’s death, she kept both her household and the studio in orderly operation, attending with successful management to the affairs of both, and keeping busy at work both her servants and her father’s pupils.
Roldan was indebted to her for valuable hints. He had carved a statue of St. Ferdinand for the Cathedral, which the canons rejected. Luisa suggested certain anatomical operations with the saw, which were perfectly successful. The canons took the work for a new one, and were satisfied; and the saint was peacefully installed in his chapel. Her chief productions were small figures of the Virgin, or groups of the Adoration of the shepherds, etc., and all were designed and executed with delicacy and grace. She sculptured a Magdalen supported by an angel, the statue giving an exquisite idea of an angel’s sweetness and protecting love. It is placed in the hospital at Cadiz. Her small pieces are full of expression.
She married Don Luis de los Arcos, and was invited to Madrid in 1692, through Don Cristobal Ontañon, who had presented several of her works to Charles II. The king was pleased, and ordered a statue of St. Michael, life size, for the church of the Escurial. This Luisa executed with great success, and to the admiration of the connoisseurs. The work elicited complimentary verses from a distinguished poet, and the artist was rewarded by the post of sculptress in ordinary to the king, with a salary of a hundred ducats, paid from the day she arrived at court.