Old Master Paintings & Spanish Colonial Art
Studio Dossier by D. José Arnaiz attached. Oil on copper, framed measurements: 53 x 45 cm, copper measurements: 14 x 11 cm. Born in Valencia on September 19, 1772, he began his artistic training as a disciple of the Franciscan Antonio de Villanueva at the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, an institution where he won the first class prize in 1789 with the canvas King Hezekiah showing off of his riches (Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia San Pío V), endowed with 40 pesos and a pension to study in Madrid. Already at court, the following year he won first place in the San Fernando Academy competition with the painting The Catholic Monarchs receiving an embassy from the King of Fez (San Fernando Academy, Madrid), and there he assimilated with extraordinary fidelity the academic teachings inherited from Mengs fundamentally through Mariano Salvador Maella, from whom Vicente López picks up the baroque and colorful sense of his compositions and the taste for drawing, precise and analytical, as a method of prior study of his paintings, being equally dazzled by the baroque lavishness of the frescoes by Luca Giordano and Corrado Giaquinto, that he contemplates in real places, and that will decisively influence the aesthetic language of his compositions. Returning to his hometown in 1792 as a prestigious painter, he carried out numerous commissions in those years, especially religious paintings and murals for Valencian churches, as well as portraits, monument projects and a large number of drawings to engrave, remaining in Valencia during the War of Independence, a time when, In addition to making the full-length portrait of Ferdinand VII with the habit of the order of Carlos III (Valencia City Council and Játiva Municipal Museum, Valencia), he will portray Marshal Soult and other French soldiers on several occasions. The portrait style of Vicente López, respectful and objective with his characters, captured with a personal sense of realism -inherited from the Valencian naturalist tradition, through the canvases of Ribalta and Ribera-, together with his extraordinary mastery in reproducing the qualities of the fabrics and the sumptuousness of the jewels and tinsel, made Fernando VII claim the Valencian artist at court on July 26, 1814, naming him his first court painter on March 1 of the following year. Since then he will become the most requested painter of the wealthy aristocracy and bourgeoisie of Madrid, alternating his work at the Palace with his teaching activity, official positions and his private commissions. In 1818 he painted the spectacular Allegory of the donation of the casino to Queen Isabel of Braganza by the Madrid City Council (Prado), contributing decisively in those years to the project of the Royal Museum of Paintings, appointed by the Crown to select and restore the paintings that they had to constitute it, and whose artistic direction he would assume from 1823. Three years later he made his superb portrait The painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Prado), without a doubt, his best-known work and the most emblematic effigy of the Aragonese painter, destined for the gallery of contemporary artists of the Museum. Director of the decorative program of the Royal Palace of Madrid, in 1828 he painted the Allegory of the Institution of the Order of Carlos III for one of its ceilings, multiplying his portrait activity in those years. In 1831 he finished the portrait of Ferdinand VII with the habit of the Order of the Golden Fleece for the Embassy of Spain to the Holy See, perhaps the most imposing and overwhelming effigy of this monarch, while his very personal style gradually accommodated to the formal language , not to the spirit, of the thriving romanticism of the Elizabethan era. He was a draftsman until a few days before his death, when he finished the portrait of General Narváez (Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia San Pío V), and died in Madrid on July 22, 1850. Reference Bibliography: Díez García, José Luis , Vicente Lopez (1772-1850). Life and work, Madrid,
