Page:A Handbook for Travellers in Spain - Vol 1.djvu/59

Rh A few have recently been added to the Museum of Madrid, where, however, Spanish art is historically but ill represented. They are, for the most part, of no great interest, and have little of the charming simplicity and tenderness of the works of the contemporary Italian masters; nor do they show the power of expression and of rendering details that distinguishes the early Flemish painters. In colour they are sombre and monotonous—a quality which characterises the whole Spanish school. Starnina (b. 1854) and Dello Delli (b. 1404), Florentine masters of reputation, settled in Spain; John Van Hyck and other Flemish painters also visited the Peninsula. It is not impossible that the frescoes which may still be seen in the chapel of Archbishop Tenorio, opening into the cloisters of the Cathedral of Toledo, may be by Starnina. They were evidently painted by one who followed the traditions of the school of Giotto. The curious paintings on leather in the ceiling of the “Sala de Justicia,” in the Alhambra, are also attributed to an Italian artist of the 14th century.

Amongst the earliest known Spanish painters who formed their style upon the combined Italian and Flemish influence, were, in the L5th century: Sanchez de Castro of Seville, whose works have, for the most part, perished; Pedro Berruguete, a painter of some reputation, to whom are attributed a series of pictures in the Madrid Gallery of the Life of 5. Domenic Guzman; Santos Cruz, his associate, to whom are also assigned some panels in the same collection; Rincon, born, it is said, in 1446, who, like Giotto in Italy, has the credit in Spain of being the author of all old pictures by unknown hands; his son Fernando Rincon; Fernando Gallegos, born at Salamanca, who, according to Cean Bermudez, studied under Albert Diirer, and whose principal works are in the cathedral of his native city (Ford terms him the Van Eyck of the Peninsula); Juan de Borgogna, who, as his name indicates, may have been born out of Spain. He appears to have learnt his art in Italy, probably in the Venetian school. His principal work is the History of the Virgin, in fresco, on the walls of the chapterhouse of the Cathedral of Toledo, which is not without considerable merit. He also painted at Avila and in other towns.

Alonso Berruguete, the son of Pedro, born 1480, went to Florence, and placed himself under Michael Angelo, whom he accompanied to Rome in 1504—studying under him painting, sculpture, and architecture. He returned to Spain in 1520, and made a revolution in Spanish art by introducing a broader and grander mode of treatment in imitation of his creat master. Charles V. appointed him “pintor y escultor de camara.” Of his works in painting none are known, but of his sculpture in marble, ' stone and wood, especially for architectural decoration, many fine examples exist in the Peninsula. He had many pupils and imitators, whose inferior works are usually attributed by ignorant guides to Berruguete.

The celebrated Antonio or Antony Moro came to Spain in 1552, as painter to the Emperor Charles V. and Philip II. He founded the Spanish school of portrait painting. ‘he Madrid Gallery contains some excellent portraits by him, especially that of Queen Mary of England. Many of those he painted of the royal family of Spain and of European princes which were in the Pardo were burnt with that palace. His most distinguished Spanish pupil was Alonso Sanchez Coello (died 1590), whose portraits of Philip II. and III., of various members of the House of Austria, and of Spanish knights and ladies, preserved in the Madrid Gallery and in