The unsung artists of Spain’s Golden Age

The 16th and 17th centuries saw Spain become the head of an empire stretching from the Americas to Asia and dominating much of Europe. This period of political power was accompanied by an artistic and intellectual flourishing that became known as the Spanish Golden Age. For the Spanish Habsburgs, who reigned from 1556 to 1700, the arts became a major means of asserting both their political authority and the power of the Catholic faith. Religious works by the likes of El Greco, Luis de Morales (known as El Divino) and Francisco de Zurbarán became a powerful medium for promoting faith and dogma, while, on a secular level, Diego Velázquez brought a new vitality to official portraiture at the Spanish Court. 

At the same time, Spain’s colonial expansion had a profound effect on indigenous artistic production in its American territories, including present-day Mexico, Central America, parts of North America, and the Viceroyalty of Peru. Evangelisation, supported by the establishment of missionary religious orders, led to the creation of new spaces of worship and an increasing demand for devotional images. As a result, European, mestizo and indigenous artists developed a specifically Latin American Baroque style that merged local traditions with western influences. 

Although these artists remain little known today, they are given equal billing to their more celebrated peers in Baroque Splendours, a fascinating new exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. The show brings together around 40 works from the Hispanic Society of America’s vast collection, founded in 1904 by the wealthy industrialist Archer Milton Huntington. Huntington developed a passion for the Hispanic world in adolescence, initially fostered through books and museums, and later through travel to Mexico, Cuba and Spain. His collecting extended beyond acknowledged masters to include artists long considered minor, whom he was instrumental in re-evaluating to provide a more comprehensive history of Spanish art than is often found in European museums.

The notion of splendour carried in the exhibition’s title shines through in the first room, where a selection of magnificent portraits suggests that while the Dutch Golden Age was all about quiet luxury, the Spanish were happy to embrace a bit of bling. Queen Isabella of Bourbon, the first wife of Philip IV, dazzles in an elaborately brocaded black velvet dress, complemented by red slashed sleeves and lace ruffs at the wrists and neck, whose various textures are exquisitely observed by Velázquez. Philip IV himself cuts a more sober figure in a 1649 portrait by Juan Carreño de Miranda, which seems designed to assert his authority while also promoting him as an attractive option for his new fiancée, Mariana of Austria. The notorious Habsburg jaw, likely the result of inbreeding, is adequately flattered.

Power gives way to piety in the next room, which features works designed to promote the Catholic faith in the aftermath of the Council of Trent (1545-63), which insisted that images be simple, direct and moving to encourage devotion. El Divino’s Ecce Homo (c.1565-70), featuring a bound Christ with downcast eyes, and Virgin with the Yarn Winder (1566-70), which sees Mary gaze down at the infant Jesus with an expression of infinite sorrow, seem like a deliberate response to these dictates. Both figures, rendered with profound sensitivity, are starkly isolated against dark backgrounds, forcing the viewer into a direct confrontation with their suffering, both spiritual and all-too-human. 

El Greco, who arrived in Spain in 1576, drew on his training as an icon painter and the influences of Roman and Venetian painting to create a style that was uniquely his own, and the works on display here, with their mesmerising combination of virtuosity and otherworldly strangeness, are an undoubted highlight of the show. In his Pietà (c.1574-76), the densely entwined figures form a tightly bound pyramid of grief and sorrow, their twisted limbs and angular drapery topped by Mary’s stricken face. His later work embraced an almost mystical edge, with Saint Francis, the Counter-Reformation’s poster boy for holiness and humility, being a favourite subject. His Head of Saint Francis (c.1590), in which the saint gazes upwards with almost impossibly large, limpid eyes, is painted in a sober, earthy and muted palette echoing the modesty of Franciscan life.

From here, we head to the Americas, and things get a bit complicated. Contemporary audiences are painfully aware that Spain’s vast territorial expansion came at the expense of indigenous populations, who were decimated by diseases brought by the colonists and then forced to endure the confiscation of their wealth, the exploitation of their natural resources, and slavery. This makes it somewhat difficult to think of the artistic exchanges between European and indigenous artists as entirely mutual. And it might also make one feel somewhat churlish for thinking the works are not always as compelling as those of the more celebrated European names here.  

There are undoubtedly some spectacular works, not least The Wedding at Cana (1696) by the Mexican painter Nicolás de Correa. Painted on a wood panel inlaid with pieces of iridescent mother-of-pearl, it belongs to the genre known as ‘enconchados’, in which the shimmering shells are intended to intensify the sensory experience of the miracle being performed. Equally spellbinding are the Flight into Egypt and The Presentation at the Temple (both 1725-1800) from the Peruvian Cuzco School. Their elaborate mother-of-pearl frames, an integral part of the composition, were designed to be viewed by candlelight, their luminosity supposedly evoking a feeling of devotion. 

Another standout is Melchor Pérez Holguín’s St Teresa of Ávila and St Peter of Alcántara (c.1724). Probably born in modern Bolivia, Holguín was one of the few South American artists to develop a personal stylistic voice, and he skilfully captures the tenderness of the close spiritual bond between St Teresa and her confessor as she gently touches his sleeve and he places his hand on her head.

However, the American Baroque that emerged from the crosscurrents of ideas and influences flowing between Spain and the New World tends towards the sentimental, a tendency less common in Europe, reflecting local religious sensibilities and tastes. While this can be charming in works such as Alonso Vázquez’s oddly relaxed Saint Sebastian (c.1603-07) or Luis Juárez’s The archangel Michael Vanquishing the Demon (c.1635-39), in which a rather goofy-looking creature with ringlets seems to raise his eyes in exasperation at the smug figure descending on him, much of the work is just a little too insipid to be truly striking. Indeed, it pales in comparison to the next section, which is devoted to Velázquez and his followers.

Portrait de Donna Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphil (1650), sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X (and his possible mistress), is a stunning example of the great painter’s virtuosity. But it is the sublime Portrait of a young girl (c.1638-42), which graces the exhibition poster and catalogue cover, that visitors seem to linger over more than any other work. Her gaze, a combination of innocence and precocious mystery, combined with the muted palette and sombre background, creates a wholly hypnotic effect from which it is difficult to tear oneself.

The show bows out on a high with two magnificent works by Zurbarán, Saint Lucy (c.1640-45) and Saint Emerentiana (c.1635-40), both dressed in stunning robes whose various textures and folds, colours and embellishments are exquisitely rendered. The catalogue claims that their rich clothing alludes to their glory in paradise, but this must have raised eyebrows among the more puritanical elements of the Catholic Church at the time. It seems that Zurbarán’s female saints and martyrs were especially popular in convents, many of which contained young girls from the aristocracy who, one imagines, were not always there by choice. It’s pleasing to think of them gaining some solace from these sublimely beautiful works. 

Overall, while the big names will be the crowd-pleasers here, and justifiably so, the exhibition deserves credit for providing an illuminating overview of Spain’s multi-faceted Golden Age, and for shining a light on some lesser-known artists from Spain’s colonial territories.