| Alonso Cano, born in Granada in 1610, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, and architect who worked primarily in Seville and Madrid. As a man, Alonso was famous for his uncontrollable temper and violent nature. In Seville, he was jailed for debt and in Madrid, he was accused of murdering his wife, who had been founded stabbed to death. Afterward, Alonso joined the church and later became a canon of the cathedral of Granada. As an artist, Alonso received his training in painting from Francisco Pacheco and sculpture from Juan Martinez Montanes. His paintings reveal none of the violence and drama of his life, however. His early works were stark and heavily influenced by tenebrism, while works from his later period (including seven Mysteries of the Virgin and St. Isidore's Miracle of the Well) are characterized by a lighter classicism. In architecture, Cano owed his training to his father Miguel Cano, a joiner and designer by profession. Alonso's greatest architectural achievement was his design of the facade of the cathedral of Granada commissioned by Philip IV, which was not completed until after his death in 1667. |
