BIOGRAPHIES

DIEGO DE VELÁZQUEZ 

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, the 6^th of June in 1599. He was an individualistic artist of the Baroque period.

From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez's artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters. Since that time, more modern artists have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works. Velázquez was educated by his parents and intended for a learned profession, received good training in languages and philosophy. He began to study under Francisco de Herrera, a vigorous painter who disregarded the Italian influence of the early Seville school. Velázquez remained with him for one year. It was probably from Herrera that he learned to use brushes with long bristles.

In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando, the king's favorite court painter, died. Don Juan de Fonseca conveyed to Velázquez the command to come to the court from then Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful minister of Philip IV. 

In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain with the subject to be the expulsion of the Moors. Velázquez won. In 1629, he went to live in Italy for a year and a half.

Velázquez was in constant and close attendance on Philip, accompanying him in his journeys to Aragon in 1642 and 1644. He died the 6^th of August 1660.

FRANCISCO DE ZURBARÁN

Zurbarán was born in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos, Extremadura; he was baptized on November 7 of that year.His parents were Luis de Zurbarán, a haberdasher, and his wife, Isabel Márquez. In childhood he set about imitating objects with charcoal. In 1614 his father sent him to Seville to apprentice for three years with Pedro Díaz de Villanueva, an artist of whom very little is known. While in Seville, Zurbarán married Leonor de Jordera, by whom he had several children. Towards 1630 he was appointed painter to Philip IV, and there is a story that on one occasion the sovereign laid his hand on the artist's shoulder, saying "Painter to the king, king of painters." After 1640 his austere, harsh, hard edged style was unfavorably compared to the sentimental religiosity of Murillo and Zurbarán's reputation declined. It was only in 1658, late in Zurbarán's life that he moved to Madrid in search of work and renewed his contact with Velázquez. Zurbarán died in poverty and obscurity.

CLAUDIO COELLO

Claudio Coello, was born in the 2nd of March of 1642, Madrid and died in the 20th of April of 1693 in Madrid, He was a spanish painter who is considered the last imporant master of the great Madrid school of the 17th century. Influenced both by Velázquez and by Juan Carreño de Miranda, he attempted to halt the decline of Spanish art, and his work was greatly admired at the time. 

The son of a famous portuguese sculptor, Faustino Coello, he studied under Francisco Rizi and was dominated at first by a newly popular exagerated style. Through the friendship of Carreño, he secured access to the royal collections, in which he studied the works of Titian, Rubens, and other masters. Josef Donoso probably taught him fresco painting, and they collaborated in the painting of churches and palaces in Madrid. In 1671 Coello decorated the ceiling of the vestry in Toledo cathedral; in 1683 he painted frescoes in the Augustinian church at Saragossa; and in 1684 he became painter to King Charles II. In 1691 he was appointed painter to the cathedral of Toledo, but his success was counterbalanced by the preference shown by the court to the Italian painter Luca Giordano, who arrived in Spain in 1692 to decorate El Escorial. Coello died a disappointed and disheartened man.

BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (January 01, 1618, Seville - on April 03, 1682) was a Spanish painter, one of the most important personalities of the baroque Spanish woman painting. Though he is known principally by his paintings of religious topic, it created a great number of images of women and children. His vibrant realistic portraits florists, street rozpustilcu and beggars constitute an extensive and attractive description of the daily life of the epoch.

Murillo was the minor of fourteen children. His father was barber and surgeon Gaspar Esteban, the name of his mother was Maria Perez Murillo. Bartolomé turned into an orphan into a very young age and was raised by one of his sisters, Ana married another barber, of Juan Agustín Lagares, who turned into his friend. Murillo is the year     1648 he married Beatriz Cabrera and they had nine children.

JOSÉ DE RIBERA

Painter and recording Spanish of the century XVII. Developed his career in italia specially in Naples. He was also an acquaintance with his name italianizado Giuseppe Ribera and with the nickname Lo Spagnoletto (" the little Spanyard ") due to his low stature and to that was claiming his origins signing his works as " Jusepe of Bank, the Spanish ". I cultivate a naturalistic style that I evolve of Caravaggio's tenebrismo towards an aesthetics mas colourist and luminous. It helped to forge the great Neapolitan school that recognized him as his indisputable teacher; and his works sent to Spain from very early date, influenced technology and iconographic models to the local painters, between them Velazquez and Murillo.

His engravings circulated for average Europe and it is clear that up to Rembrandt it knew them. Some of his works were copied of several centuries. Bank is a painter distinguished from the Spanish school, though his work was done entirely in Italy and of fact, there are not known sure examples of his beginnings in Spain. Labelled by long time as a horrifying and shaded creator, mainly by some of his paintings of martyrdoms, this prejudice is diluído in the last decades thanks to multiple exhibitions and investigations, which claim it as versatile creator and skilful colourist.