Authors

Pantoja de la Cruz, Juan. Valladolid, ca. 1553 – Madrid, 26.10.1608. Chamber painter of Philip III. He started his first apprenticeship at a very early age, in the workshop of Alonso Sánchez Coello. In one of his wills —which provide a great deal of information on his life and work— he refers to him as “my master”. He did not however stay in Madrid, but left shortly for France after the death of Elisabeth of Valois in 1568, in the company of Jooris van der Straeten, a colleague of Sánchez Coello at Court. From 1572 onwards, Van der Straeten worked as “Peintre de la Reine” for Elisabeth of Austria, the sister of Anna of Austria. After the death of Elisabeth's husband, Charles IX of France, she r...

Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Diego. Velázquez. Seville, 06.06.1599 baptised. – Madrid, 06.08.1660. Painter.Born in Seville to a Portuguese father (Rodríguez de Silva) and a mother from Seville (Velázquez), he was baptised on 6th June 1599. His father was an ecclesiastical notary in the Seville Chapter, and this brought him in touch with books and people of culture at an early age.In 1609, and not quite ten years old, he spent a few months at the workshop of Francisco de Herrera the Elder.The master's bad temper soon drove Velázquez away from his workshop, and on 17th September 1611, he signed an apprenticeship contract with Francisco Pacheco, undertaking to stay at his new master's house for six years.Pacheco was a man of cult...

Carreño Miranda, Juan. Avilés, 25.03.1614 – Madrid, 03.10.1685. Painter. Son—possibly natural— of an Asturian nobleman who traded in paintings, and the nephew of Andrés Carreño (c. 1591-1660), a modestly renowned painter established in Valladolid. He moved to Madrid with his father at a very young age, and joined the studio of Pedro de las Cuevas (who died in 1644), a painter who was highly esteemed as a teacher and whose workshop included many of the Madrid painters of the age, such as Antonio de Pereda, Francisco Camilo, Antonio Arias and Juan Montero de Rozas, as students. Afterwards, he joined the workshop of Bartolomé Román, pupil of Vicente Carducho, in order to learn the techniques of colour. The traces of Carducho that ca...

Roldán, Luisa Ignacia. La Roldana. Sevilla, 08.09.1652 baptised. – Madrid, 10.01.1706. Sculptor.Luisa Ignacia Roldán, also called La Roldana, was the daughter of the sculptor Pedro Roldán. She was probably born in August 1652, as her baptismal certificate is dated 8th September of the same year. She was the fourth of nine children born to Pedro Roldán and Teresa de Jesús de Mena y Ortega, who went on to form a large family of sculptors.Very little is known of her early childhood and youth owing to the lack of surviving documentation. In any case, she was probably trained at her father’s workshop, one of the most important in Seville and which received a large number of commissions. History has traditionally claimed that father and daughter wor...

Van der Goten Peeters, Jacob. The Elder. Brussels (Belgium), 1659 – Madrid, 1724. First master tapestry weaver of the Royal Tapestry Workshop of Santa Bárbara.He was the son of Peter van der Goten and Wilhelmina Peeters, and was married to Anna Maria Canyuwel, with whom he had six children: Franciscus Ignatius, Jacob, Peter, Maria Theresa, Cornelius and Adriaan.When the first Bourbon king ascended the throne, there were no industries in Spain that could fulfil the demand for luxury goods such as tapestries, carpets, porcelain, fine fabrics and clothing. Even everyday items such as cutlery, stockings and paper had to be imported.Following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713-1714), which ended the War of Succession, the former Habsburg Netherlands had fallen into the hands of the Empero...

Juvarra, Filippo. Messina (Italy), 1678 – Madrid, 31.01.1736. Architect.The most renowned architect of his time in Italy and arguably in Europe, his extensive and well-studied European career drew to a close in Madrid, where he had been called by Philip V to build the New Royal Palace in 1735.Apparently descended from Spaniards —surnamed Ibarra— who settled in Sicily when it was part of the Habsburg Monarchy, Juvarra’s initial artistic education was with his father, a silversmith, in Messina. Although he followed his father's wish that he join the Church, and was ordained at the age of twenty-five, from this moment onwards, the young priest developed a passion for architecture and moved to Rome, where he would begin his real training. There he began ...

Meléndez, Miguel Jacinto. Oviedo (Asturias), 1679 – Madrid, 25.08.1734. Painter. Miguel Meléndez (or Menéndez, according to the original form of the surname) is the first representative of a long line of painters extending well into the 19th century. His brother Francisco was the first to propose the creation of an Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, which he presented to Philip V in 1726; he was the painter of miniatures for the Royal Household and, together with his sons Luis (who became the best 18th-century still-life painter of Spain) and José Agustín, he produced splendid miniatures for the choirbooks of the new Royal Palace in Madrid. Francisca, the daughter of José Agustín, born in Cádiz in 1770, was admitted to the Royal A...

Castillo Aragonés, José del. Madrid, 14.10.1737 – 05.10.1793. Painter. José del Castillo was born in Madrid in 1737. The son of Juan Tomás Castillo and Melchora Aragonés, he began his studies when he was barely ten years old, joining the drawing classes at the Preparatory Council of the Academy of San Fernando under José Romeo. His excellent qualities brought him to everybody’s notice, and in 1751 he received a grant from José de Carvajal y Lancáster to study in Rome under Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1766), with whom he would also return to Spain in 1753. The Italian had been summoned by Ferdinand VI to continue the decorations of the Royal Sites following the death of Jacopo Amigoni the previous year. Once in Madrid,...

Lagrú, Joseph. Valsaín (Segovia), c. 1760 – Madrid, 1812. Glass engraver. Master engraver at the Royal Glass Workshop of La Granja de San Ildefonso. The son of Luis Lagrú, a sculptor at the Royal Site Valsaín, where he was born, and the elder of two brothers, Joseph Lagrú began working as an apprentice aged nine in the engraving room at San Ildefonso engraving room, circa 1775. During the six winter months, he attended the Academy of Drawing of San Ildefonso in the evenings to perfect his skills in this area. At the age of twenty-five he was assigned to the general store in Madrid as the official overseer of the engraving room, at the same time attending drawing classes at the Royal Academy of San Fernando. He held this post until 1787, when he ret...

Brambilla e Ferrari, Ferdinando. Fara di Gedda d’Adda (Italy), 1763 - Madrid, 23.01.1834. Painter. The son of Francisco Brambilla and Antonia Ferrari, he began painting at a very early age, and was working as a painter in Milan when it was suggested he join Alessandro Malaspina's expedition at the end of March 1791. His inclusion was a matter of some luck, as two other individuals had been invited: Juan Ravenet, a painter from Parma who hastened to accept, and Blas Martini, who, by rejecting it, enabled the young Brambilla, who was already a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, to join. After an eventful journey by horse-drawn carriage from Barcelona to the kingdom’s capital, he headed to Galicia. After a few weeks, they arrived in Veracruz, having briefly s...

González Velázquez Tolosa, Isidro. Madrid, 15.05.1765 – 07.12.1840. Architect and engraver. Isidro Velázquez —as he would sign his works— hailed from a family of artists who were renowned in Spanish courtly and academic circles from the start of the 18th century until the first half of the 19th century. He was the second son of Antonio González Velázquez, painter to Charles III, and Manuela Tolosa y Aviñón, and the nephew of Luis and Alejandro González Velázquez. While both his uncles were painters, Alejandro was also an architect. While his brothers Cástor and Zacarías also followed their father, who had been the student of Corrado Giaquinto in Rome (1746-1752), Isidro embraced architectur...

Soria, Narciso Práxedes. Madrid, 1786 – 13.11.1854. Goldsmith and diamond cutter. He belonged to a large family of silversmiths. His father, Narciso Severo Soria, was master to numerous apprentices and one of the wealthiest smiths at the Court. His brothers Fernando and Manuel, and his nephew Victor, also worked as goldsmiths. Three of his sons, Ildefonso, Juan and Antonio, would followed in his footsteps. He began his training under his father, who applied for his apprenticeship certificate on 30th August 1803. He appeared for his first apprentices' examination on 2nd December 1805, without obtaining any awards. On 28th July 1807, he was granted the title of manciple at his father's request. In the list of officials published by the College of San Eloy on 1st Januar...

Texedor Díaz, Rafael Facundo, Rafael Tegeo or Rafael Tejeo. Caravaca de la Cruz (Murcia), 27.11.1798 – Madrid, 03.10.1856. Painter. Called “Tegeo” or sometimes also “Tejeo”, he was a complex artist who depicted with great clarity, the academic eclecticism of the painters of an entire generation, halfway between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. His refined and precise artistic language with a characteristic fluid, clear and emphatic drawing, ranged from the declamatory style of his early compositions -with a highly visible influence of the classical tradition- to the delicate simplicity of his portraits of the bourgeoisie that attest to the maturity of his art, always characterised by an exquisite artistic sensibility. His early training was with the Ge...

Debas et Dujant, Fernando. France, mid-19th century – early 20th century. Photographer.He settled in Spain in the 1870s, and started his professional career in Madrid with his brother Edgardo Debas, also a photographer by profession. They set up a studio at 22, Calle del Príncipe, under the trade name of Fotografía Parisiense Debas Hermanos. After several years of working together, they went their separate ways. On 30th March 1875, King Alfonso XII granted Fernando the title of chamber photographer, as well as permission to use the royal coat of arms on his establishment's displays and invoices. From that date onwards, and in the same studio, he styled himself as "First Photographer to His Majesty the King and the Princess of Asturias". In 1877 he col...

Demaría López, José Luis. Campúa. Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), 1870 – Madrid, 22.09.1936. Photojournalist, war correspondent, journalist and theatre impresario. He learnt the rudiments of the trade in the studio of Manuel Compañy, a renowned portraitist. Towards the end of the century, when Compañy acquired and refurbished the famous Greco gallery located at Calle de Alcalá 19 and formerly owned by Eduardo Díaz Otero —one of the best photographers of the time— he entrusted its management to his most trusted assistant. Encouraged by the popularity of his chronicles of events among readers of the press, Demaría López decided to set himself up as an independent photographer. In keeping with the f...

Francisco Flórez, nacido en Murcia y afincado en Madrid hasta su fallecimiento en 1824, fue uno de los constructores de pianos más reputados y afamados de su época. Si bien son muy pocos los datos que se disponen sobre su primera etapa de formación, a partir de 1784, cuando ya aparece instalado en Madrid, es posible reconstruir su trayectoria profesional.