The Story of Seville

by Walter M. Gallichan

His earliest work was a series of pictures, illustrative of the life of the Apostle Peter, which he painted for the Chapter of the Cathedral. They may still be inspected in the Cap de San Pedro, but unfortunately the deficiency of light renders it well-nigh impossible to see them.

The celebrated Death of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the remarkable series of pictures, painted for the Chartreuse monks of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, are now in the Museo.

For the Church of the Hospital del Sangre he painted eight small pictures of female saints. They are portraits of the beauties who reigned in the city during the life of Zurbaran, and are among the most charming of the pictures of women to be found in Seville. Especially mark Santa Matilda in her crimson robe, embroidered with gold and pearls, Santa Dorotea in lilac, and Santa Iñes in purple, and bearing a lamb in her arms.

The fame of Zurbaran was overshadowed by Murillo, who became the central figure in the artistic life of Seville, during the latter half of the seventeenth century.

The position Murillo occupies in the record of Andalusian art is so significant, that it appears fitting to notice his work, and that of his brilliant contemporary Velazquez, in a separate chapter; and to conclude this brief chronicle of the Sevillian artist with two names—Alonso Cano and Juan de Valdés Leal, the last painters of Andalusia, whose work is worthy of special note.

Alonso Cano, 1601-1667, was not born in Seville, but came to the city, when quite young, to receive instruction from Pacheco and Juan de Castillo. He painted pictures for the Carthusians, and the other convents and churches, but a duel, fought with a brother artist, in 1639, drove him from the city. The finest instance of his work in Seville is Our Lady of Bethlehem, in the Cathedral. It was painted in Malaga for Señor D. Andres Cascentes, who presented it to Seville. The light is dim, and it can only be seen by the glow from the tapers which burn upon the altar. It is somewhat conventional in treatment, and bears distinct traces of Italian mannerism. Yet the picture is not without charm, and the Spanish national note is not entirely absent. The hands and feet are painted with extreme care, and the crimson robe and dark-blue mantle of the Virgin are exquisite in colour. The picture may be regarded as typical of his work. One of his chief faults was repetition, and he was frequently accused by his contemporaries of copying from the works of other masters; a charge which he is said to have challenged, with the following answer: 'Do the same thing, with the same effect as I do, and all the world will pardon you.' His power as an artist has been somewhat over-estimated, and his claim to be called 'the Michelangelo of Spain' rests solely upon the fact that he was sculptor and architect as well as painter.

Juan de Valdés Leal, 1630-1691, lived until the time when Andalusian art was fast approaching its decline. His early life was embittered by jealousy of Murillo, and much of his energy was expended in useless quarrels with his brother artists. His pictures are mannered, but the best are vigorous, and their main defects are due to hasty execution. He appears to have had no power to finish his work; when he tried to be careful he became weak. The Museo contains many of his pictures. The Virgin bestowing the Chasuble on San Ildefonso in the Cap de San Francisco, in the Cathedral, is one of his finest works. The two pictures in the Hospital de la Caridad were painted to illustrate the vanity of worldly grandeur. They are theatrical, and have little 'literary' attraction, but the execution exhibits a certain power. In one of them a hand holds a pair of scales, in which the sins of the world—represented by bats, peacocks, serpents and other objects—are weighed against the emblems of Christ's Passion; in the other, which is the finer composition, Death, with a coffin under one arm, extinguishes a taper, which lights a table spread with crowns, jewels and all the gewgaws of earthly pomp. The words In Ictu Oculi circle the gleaming light of the taper, while upon the ground rests an open coffin, dimly revealing the corpse within.

It was this picture which caused Murillo to remark that it was something to be looked at with the nostrils closed. To which rather uncertain praise Leal is reported to have replied, 'Ah, my compeer, it is not my fault, you have taken all the sweet fruit out of the basket and left me only the rotten.'

With the death of Valdés Leal, at the close of the seventeenth century, the long chain of artists, who had made the name of Seville famous, terminates. He left behind him no painter of specific merit. The artists who remained were dreary conventionalists, without originality, mere copyists of those who had preceded them. The study of their work yields neither pleasure nor profit. It is better to leave the record of the artists of Seville, while the memory of her greatest masters is still vivid, than to trace the slow decay of her art into feeble mediocrity.

Note.—In order to facilitate the finding of the works of the artists mentioned in this chapter, this list is appended, naming their chief pictures, and the places where they may be found.