This book explores the cultural exchange between Italy and Spain in the seventeenth century, examining Spanish collectors' predilection for Italian painting and its influence on Spanish painters.
The Spanish Golden Age was a time of unprecedented development in the visual arts in Seville. In the early decades of the seventeenth century, the leading practitioners of Mannerism in the city lost ground to a new generation of artists who embraced naturalism,1 creating a body of work that was highly prized across the territories under Spanish rule. Since the late fifteenth century, Seville had grown into one of the most important enclaves for maritime trade between America and the rest of Europe, and a cultural crossroads for the interaction of people from different nations. Many of these foreign merchants found it convenient to stay in the Kingdom of Seville, moving there with their families to set up their companies, in the process bringing with them their own culture. Among these immigrants, Italians played a special role. Their presence and artistic influence on the Sevillian school of painting are the main subject of this volume.
The Kingdom of Seville covered a vast territory that comprised the current provinces of Seville, Huelva and CĂĄdiz, as well as other localities of MĂĄlaga and part of the south of Badajoz (Figure 1.1). An analysis of the regionâs cultural heritage in the literature, from the earliest treatises to contemporary publications, shows its significant contribution to the world of art. Notable advances have been made in its cataloging and documentation, as well as in the reconstruction of the biography of its main artists. However, much of this research has been inward-looking in its focus, successively seeking explanations for its idiosyncrasy in the same milieu that generated it. Lack of a wider Spanish or even European perspective has resulted in a partial view that has overlooked some of the connections which had an impact on the development of the Sevillian school during this period.
One of the decisive factors that shaped Spanish art in the early modern period was a heavy Italian influence â where influence is understood as the elements of Italian culture that had been imported into the Spanish art scene since the sixteenth century. These ideological, literary and artistic aspects strongly impacted the Castilian tradition. The political relations derived from the Spanish crownâs possession of various territories in the Italian peninsula â the Duchy of Milan and the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia â which led to the establishment of a wide network of cultural exchanges between Spain and Italy that prepared the ground for the broad reception of Italian artists, models and iconographies in the Spanish terrain. Seville, the most important port of trade between Europe and America, underwent an evident process of cultural hybridity due, in large part, to the presence of diverse groups of immigrants whose customs were gradually assimilated into the local urban culture.2
However, by the early twentieth century the artworks in these collections had been dispersed and their presence practically forgotten. But even if there had been no certitude of the coexistence of these Italian works with the production of the local masters in seventeenth-century Seville, historians â for the most part foreign â continued to underline the affinities between them. For instance, August L. Mayer identified the compositional inspiration for Murilloâs The Infant Christ and Saint John the Baptist with a Shell to be derived from a print by Reni, which in turn was based on a composition by Annibale Carracci (1560â1609).13 Whatâs more, he discerned in Murilloâs style the influence of Raphaelâs and Correggioâs oeuvres, which led him to state that these traits âturn Murillo into Guido Reniâs companion, and we think we really should call him the Spanish Reni more than the Spanish Raphael.â14
By then, the work of both painters â Reni and Murillo â was experiencing an aesthetic depreciation in Spain, translated into a visual fatigue probably produced by the plethora of reproductions of Murilloâs paintings in the market. Today, Murilloâs oeuvre has regained its value thanks, among others, to the many events organized around the fourth centenary of his birth. Reniâs style, however, continues to be unjustly underrated precisely on account of its stylistic assimilation with Murilloâs.
Denying any foreign influence in Herreraâs compositional process, Sentenach maintained that the artistâs technique was based exclusively on the imitation of nature. Thus, he made him responsible for introducing this new style into Seville, achieving this feat exclusively through his genius, âhis own inspiration and the mastery of the tools which he had acquired.â17 In this way Sentenach contended that the origin of Sevillian naturalism was a product of its own evolution, ignoring the contemporary success of Caravaggism. He endorsed this thesis by claiming Juan de Roelas (â 1625) to be a disciple of Herrera, even when he knew that he might have trained in Italy at the beginning of the seventeenth century.18
Indeed, Sentenach recognized a certain parallelism between Roelasâs palette and the brilliant coloring of the Venetian school, but rather than reading this as a progression of influences, he saw it as a casual association of ideas. He thought that Seville and Venice were twinned in that they shared the atmosphere of port cities, even if one was a river harbor and the other a seaport. He believed that the Sevillian school was destined to be the sister of the Venetian one, with Roelas as the link between them.19 He conceded that Roelas â whom he believed to be of Sevillian origin, when in reality he was born in Flanders â must have studied and assimilated the techniques of Tintoretto (1518â1594), Titian and Veronese (1528â1588), discovering the way to make certain colors shine, a skill that on his return he combined with the naturalism he learned in Seville from Herrera.20
The scholar prepared a convincing explanation for the enigmatic naturalism present in VelĂĄzquezâs youthful work. While the latter trained under Pacheco, an artist who consecrated his practice to the production of works in a late Mannerist style, he had previously been Herreraâs apprentice, and this enabled Sente...