Retratos españoles en los países checos

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Juan de Flandes.

He was an Early Netherlandish painter who was active in Spain from 1496 to 1519; his actual name is unknown. He was born around 1460 in Flanders (modern Belgium)

He is only documented after he became an artist at the court of Isabella I of Castile in Spain, where he is first mentioned in the accounts in 1496, and described as "court painter" by 1498, continuing in her service until her death in 1504. He mostly painted accomplished portraits of the royal family, but also most of a large group of small panels for a polyptych altarpiece for Isabella, now widely dispersed with the largest group of panels in the royal collection in Madrid.

El Greco 

El greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos, (1541 – 7 April 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his national Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krēs, "Cretan").

El Greco received his initial training as an icon painter of the Cretan school, the leading centre of post-Byzantine art. In addition to painting, he probably studied the classics of ancient Greece, and perhaps the Latin classics also; he left a "working library" of 130 books at his death, including the Bible in Greek and an annotated Vasari. Candia was a center for artistic activity where Eastern and Western cultures co-existed harmoniously, where around two hundred painters were active during the 16th century, and had organized a painters' guild, based on the Italian model. In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was described in a document as a "master" ("maestro Domenigo"), meaning he was already a master of the guild and presumably operating his own workshop.Crete was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done.[2] In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.

El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.[3] He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

Luis de Morales

Luis de Morales (1512 - 9 May 1586) was a Spanish painter born in Badajoz, Extremadura. Known as "El Divino", most of his work was of religious subjects, including many representations of the Madonna and Child and the Passion.

Influenced, especially in his early work, by Raphael Sanzio and the Lombard school of Leonardo, he was called by his contemporaries "The Divine Morales", because of his skill and the shocking realism of his paintings, and because of the spirituality transmitted by all his work.

His work has been divided by critics into two periods, an early stage under the influence of Florentine artists such as Michelangelo and a more intense, more anatomically correct later period similar to German.

Alonso Sánchez Coello.

Alonso Sánchez Coello (Portuguese: Alonso Sanches Coelho 1531 – 8 August 1588) was a Spanish portrait painter, of Portuguese origin, of the Spanish Renaissance and one of the pioneers of the great tradition of Spanish portrait painting.

Alonso Sánchez Coello was born in Benifairó de les Valls, near Valencia, and spent his childhood there, until the death of his father when he was around ten years old. He was educated in Portugal at his grandfather's home. Coello's years in Portugal and his family name of Portuguese origin (Coelho) led to a long-standing belief that he was in fact Portuguese. His grandfather (after whom he was named) was in the service of King John III of Portugal who sent the young painter to study with Anthonis Mor (also known as Antonio Moro) in Flanders around 1550. He was under the service of Antoine de Granville, bishop of Arras, learning from Mor. While studying in Flanders, Coello also spent time copying some of Titian's works.

Andrés López Polanco

Andrés López Polanco with his large picture of King Philip II showed himself to be a follower-up of sixteenth century Court portraiture, but he possessed certain characteristic of his own. First he painted for Juan Hurtado de Valesco, later for the Habsburgs but only as a copyist. Max Dvořák considered his portraiture a further stage in the development of Spanish Court art, an immediate pattern for Velázquez.

The figure of the King, given in a vague architectonic setting, with strong side lighting, is effective as a striking silhouette, and all interest is focused on the face. It rises out of a white collar which contrasts with the dark background.

Andrés López: Philip III; oil on canvas

Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1554-1608)

 The involved question of attribution becomes further complicated the moment when Sánchez’s pupil and follower Juan Pantoja de la Cruz appeared on the scene. He was likewise Court Artist to Philip II and Philip III. Pantoja worked for the Villahermosa family, as shown by the Portrait of María Luisa de Aragón. This picture represents a seven-year old girl dressed in mourning. Her father died in the royal prison that year before. The painting shows how Mannerist trends were gaining an upper hand in that of Pantoja de la Cruz. Pantoja painted his portraits with a finely graded colour scale as if seen from very close up, and certain aspects are shown from different angels of view. This created a special type of portrait known as the “genre of the Habsburg dynasty”. The Mannerist conception of the figures and objects often contrast surprisingly – the face became an increasingly stressed feature and in the course of development became the dominant aspect of Spanish portraiture.

Both Sánchez and Pantoja presented their monarchs and aristocrats without any idealization and thus established a tradition followed up by Velázquez, the entire Baroque school and later Goya. Their portraits fulfilled all demands made by their Spanish clients, who in their portraits wished to see the embodiment of seriousness (gravedad), majesty (majestad) and honour (honra).

Juan Pantoja de la Cruz: María Luisa de Aragón; oil on canvas