Juan Bautista Maino
(1578 - 1641) |
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Secular Narratives, Portraiture Art Work
| Name: |
Juan Bautista Maino |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Toledo |
| Nationality: |
Spanish |
| Birth: |
1578 |
| Death: |
1641 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Secular Narratives, Portraiture |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
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Biography
| An important representative of Spanish painting before Velazquez, Maino very likely studied in Italy around 1600 to 1605. Working in the orbit of Orazio Gentilescm and Carlo Saraceni, Maino was also influenced in the early part of his career by Caravaggism; he retained throughout his life a preference for clear, meticulously detailed realism, which maintains an almost supernatural clarity throughout the picture-an approach that traces its ancestry to the fifteenth century. Maino's father was Milanese; his mother is variously described as Portuguese or Spanish. Maino's Italian roots were reinforced by an early visit there, a visit corroborated by a seventeenth-century publication that described Maino as a disciple of Annibale Carracci and a friend of Guido Reni. Since we know Maino was back in Pastrana by January 1608, his Roman travels must be given to the first years of the seventeenth century. By then he was already in his early twenties and must have had his initial artistic training in Spain with an unknown master. After his return to Pastrana, he painted a Trinity for a side altar in the church of the Franciscanas Concepcionistas, which scholars point to as evidence of his friendship with Guido Reni. By March 1611 Maino was in Toledo, restoring a fresco in the cloister of the cathedral. In 1612 the Dominican monastery of San Pedro Martir commissioned him to paint its main altarpiece, as well as to fresco the area around the entrance portal under the choir. The four large paintings constituting the altar still survive. The Prado preserves the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Pentecost, while the Museo Balaguer (Villanueva y Geltro) preserves the Resurrection. Two predellas, St. John the Baptist in a Landscape and St. John the Evangelist in a Landscape, are in the Prado. These pictures show Maino absorbing his Italian influences into a personal idiom - the large and expansive figural composition types of Camillo Procaccini* still echo in the Adoration of the Shepherds. The latter work also shows Maino's study of Saraceni, which is equally evident in the use of primary colors and manipulated lighting in his Adoration of the Magi. His flesh tones are reminiscent of Orazio Gentileschi. In 1613 Maino joined the Dominican monastery in Toledo and several years later (some sources say ca. 1620) he moved to Madrid, where he became drawing master to Prince Philip (later Philip IV). His production slowed thereafter, although his undiminished talents are evident in his contributions to the decorative program done for King Philip in ihe Buen Retiro (1634/5), for which VelSzquez contributed his Surrender of Breda. Maino's Recapture of Bahia is notable for its thoughtful arrangement of figures, its beautiful execution of form, and its narrative clarity. Maino was also a fine portrait artist who, according to contemporary sources, often painted likenesses. His surviving examples reveal him to be a dispassionate observer, working in the objective tradition so favored by his Dutch contemporaries. A particularly forceful example is the Portrait of a Dominican Monk (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology). Maino is exceptional among Spanish painters for his absorption of Caravaggism into a personal and highly successful idiom-an idiom limited to a very few artists (Ribera, Zurbarn, and Velazquez) in Spain after Maino traded his artistic career for a religious one. |
Samples of Work
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