Claudio Coello
(1642 - 1693) |
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Portraiture, Frescos Art Work
| Name: |
Claudio Coello |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Madrid |
| Nationality: |
Spanish |
| Birth: |
1642 |
| Death: |
1693 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Portraiture, Frescos |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
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Biography
| Probably the leading painter of the later Spanish Baroque, Claudio Coello is today unjustly eclipsed by that great triad of Spaniards Velazquez, Zurbardn, and Murillo. Coello's premature death at age fifty one in April 1693 ended the brilliant procession of talent that had made up Spain's Golden Age of painting. Trained in Madrid with Francisco Rizi until 1660, Coello learned painting and theater design from his master. He may have traveled to Rome once his apprenticeship was completed. His signature on a drawing, together with his absorption of contemporary Roman baroque as evidenced by his earliest work, strongly suggests a visit to Rome around 1660. On the other hand, two painters fresh from Rome Jose Jimenez Donoso and Andries Smidt arrived in Madrid around 1660 and could have brought much of Coello's source material with them. His first dated work, Christ at the Door of the Temple dated 1660, Madrid, Prado, has demonstrable connections to Italian painting. By 1664 the young artist was rapidly becoming proficient, as demonstrated by his Triumph of St. Augustine dated 1664, Madrid, Prado. Here the best features of his talents are already markedly evident a soft opalescent luminosity, a monumental conception of the figure, and a dignified yet sentimental facial expression. Two years later he signed and dated St. Joseph with the Christ Child Toledo, OH, Museum of Art. Here his powerful, graceful sense of form is again ad to a majestic yet strongly emotional pictorial conception. The same year saw a commisson for the high altar of the Church of Santa Cruz, His Annunciation dated 1668, Madrid, Convent of San Placido is a spectacular conception, reaching a level of splendor, pageantry, and drama rarely found in Spanish painting. painting, particularly the work of Baciccio and Luca Giordano. Other major altarpieces include Virgin and Child with the Theological Virtues and Virgin of the Pillar Appearing to St. James the Major, in which his capacity to achieve grand yet unified effects is masterfully demonstrated. Through his friendship with the court painter Carreno, Coello received royal commissions and these were supplemented by requests from churches throughout Castille, for which he supplied both canvases and fresco decorations. Coello also painted portraits of famous men on the facade. Among the paintings and easel pictures he produced in the 1670s and 1680s were commissions from Madrid churches including San Andres, San Isidro, San Gines, San Nicolas, and San Martin. His altarpieces for the churches of San Juan Evangelista, Torrejon de Ardoz, and Santa Maria Magdalen in Ciempozuelos are still in situ. By 1680 Coello had established himself as one of the chief artists in Spain's capital. A good number of canvases survive, showing him to be a master of color, drawing, light, narration, and portraiture. Upon Francisco Rizi's death in 1685. His decorations for the Escorial included what would become his most important surviving painting, the so-called La Sagrada Forma (Escorial), completed in 1690. Left unfinished by Rizi, it portrays King Charles and members of the court kneeling before the host of Gorkum, held by the prior, Fray Francisco de los Santos, within the Escorial. Opinion is now divided as to the extent of Coello's dependence on Rizi's original design. Many scholars credit the final image entirely to Coello, assuming that he scrapped Rizi's design altogether. Like Velazquez's Las Meninas, Coello's painting combines a portrait of a room with a group portrait, historic narrative, and religious as well as political allegory within the confines of a single picture, in this case an altar painting. Its success depends on Coello's gifts as a portraitist, narrator, and dramatist. Because of his abilities, La Sagrada Forma is one of the finest examples of Spanish baroque painting. It is also his largest surviving work on canvas, measuring five meters by three meters. Here Coello*s mastery of light, his brilliance at individual characterization, his skill at understated drama are all balanced within his delicate, fluid, painterly style and his fine sense of color and description. Upon the completion of this picture, Coello had only three more years to live, years marred by the arrival in 1692 of Luca Giordano, who rapidly rose to prominence within the court. Coello's last known painting was the Martyrdom of St. Stephen done for the church of San Esteban in Salamanca. |
Samples of Work
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