Two Spanish Renaissance Artists
One Denied Commissions Yet One Named Court Painter to King Philip II
![El Greco The Opening of the Fifth Seal detail, Wikimedia Commons [public domain]](http://images.suite101.com/125757_el_grecothe.opening.of.the.fifth.seal.jpg "El Greco The Opening of the Fifth Seal detail, Wikimedia Commons [public domain]")
Genius El Greco was honored by a contemporary poet; Juan Fernández Navarrete was given the Moniker "El Mudo"
1. Which 16th-century Spanish Renaissance painter is characterized as "the softest brush ever to give soul to a panel, life to canvas" (by Luis de Góngora)?
El Greco
El Greco (1541-1614) was a 16th-century master of the Spanish Renaissance (born Domenicos Theotokopoulos). El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he defies placement in any conventional style or period: he infused Spanish art with his own personal rendition of late medieval Byzantine art and the manner of the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for startlingly elongated and gaunt figures and strange, somehow chilly and ashen, colors.
He was known for an excessive desire for originality. His pictures have imaginative visionary quality and could never be accused of being commonplace. Though he submitted paintings to King Philip of Spain for approval, he was not awarded the commissions he sought. El Greco’s religious paintings had great appeal for the people, however, and during his lifetime he was immensely popular. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he is considered an inspired genius of Western art.
El Greco was a prosperous man. He had a large house in Toledo where he entertained members of the nobility and the intellectual elite, such as the poet Luis de Góngora. Gongora wrote poems about El Greco and his art, including this epitaph to commemorate the death of El Greco:
“Here lies El Greco. Nature inherited his art,
Art his knowledge,
Iris (the goddess of the rainbow)his colors,
Phebus (the son of Apollo) his light, and
Morpheus (the god of dreams) his shadows.”
2. Which 16th-century Spanish Renaissance painter was also called “El Mudo” (the dumb one)?
Juan Fernández Navarrete
Navarette (1526-1579) is a Spanish Renaissance painter of the 16th century. His painting developed during a time that valued innovation, marked by an interest in Mannerism and by a renewed fascination with the Venetians’ use of luminous colors.
King Philip II of Spain named Navarette court painter and set him to work in the new monastery of El Escorial where the bulk of his lifelong work was completed. After a short stay in Italy, where he briefly studied in the studio of the great master Titian, he started work in the Escorial. In the Escorial, a royal Hieronymite monastery dedicated to St. Laurence as well as a monument to the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, the decoration was carefully coordinated with the architecture to create a unified artistic effect. It was a hugely ambitious project that brought together a monastery, a college, seminary, royal library, palace, and a hospital into one complex with the huge basilica of St. Laurence in the center. Navarette is known as the most progressive and accomplished of the Spanish painters who produced work in the Escorial.
He painted in clear, vivid colors with great attention to detail. Though called the “Spanish Titian,” because of the influence of the great master which he picked up during the stay in his studio, Navarrete was not an imitator of any Italian styles. He was an original. He painted quickly, surely, and spontaneously. In fact, it is said that in one depiction of the Holy Family he painted such strange accessories – a cat, a dog, and a partridge – that the king, who was difficult to please, made him promise never again to put "such indecorous things in a holy picture."
Navarrete had been a deaf-mute since boyhood. An illness in his infancy deprived him of his hearing; as a child he began picking up charcoal and expressing himself by making small drawings. His well-to-do parents placed him in a monastery where he learned how to paint from a talented monk.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2006.
