17^th Century. Spanish

Juan Carreño de Miranda was one of the most important artists of the second half of the seventeenth century. A painter of history and religious works, and also portraits, his oeuvre stands out for his free-flowing brushwork and masterful use of colour, calling to mind the work of sixteenth-century Venetian artists.

Born into a noble family, he began his training in Valladolid with his uncle Andrés Carreño, furthering it in Madrid, where he arrived with his father at the age of eleven. There he continued his apprenticeship, first in the studio of Pedro de las Cuevas (ca. 1583-1644), where he learned the techniques of drawing, and later with Bartolomé Román (ca. 1585-1647), who taught him the use of colour. His early paintings, with a heightened ornamental quality, soon came to the attention of court circles.

In 1639 he would have already known Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), who favoured him with the commission to decorate the Hall of Mirrors at the Royal Alcázar of Madrid. In 1669 he was appointed King’s Painter, and soon after that, in 1671, first Court Painter, thus reaching the highest honour a painter could hope to achieve in Spain, and he became a highly respected figure in the courts of Philip IV (1605-1665) and Charles II (1661-1700).

His profound knowledge of Venetian painting lent his technique a light touch and chromatic wealth while his admiration for Flemish painters afforded greater compositional boldness. In his portraits, for which he is largely recalled, it is possible to perceive the legacy of local artists before him, like Vicente Carducho (ca. 1576-1638) or Velázquez himself, and also the addition, in noble sitters, of a decorative element borrowed from Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641).

Carreño de Miranda was also a highly reputed fresco painter, and the most notable surviving evidence of his activity in this vein is the painting of the vault of the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes (Madrid).