THE OIL PORTRAIT CAPTIVATES THE SPANISH PAINTING
Since the middle of the 16th century, until the end of the 19th century, the Oil Portrait is other of the genres that defines the Spanish painting; the faces might captivate some painters that go in depth and that achieved to recreate the imitated feelings on those looks of mild tranquility.
Portrait in the Baroque Period
Both, the Still Life as the Oil Portraits define the Spanish Baroque, with great exponents between them, as the admired Diego Velazquez, the Sevillian painter, with his art divided between the Still Life and the portraits as painter of the court. On the oil portrait of Juan Pareja, can be seen a defiant look of a confident man, but it we see it in detail, we become aware of the weakness of someone that hides his torments. Precisely in this, lies the value of Velazquez, by embedding the duality that humanizes the portrait with such mastery that renders him immortal.
Much more than a face
It’s the connection betweern the artist, their surrounding environment and the reason that inspires, in this case, the look of another human being and the own inner passions that without any doubt, defines a good oil portrait. Joaquin Sorolla, the Valencian painter, gets an easy connection with that swirl of emotions. In his painting “A hebrew”, we find the face of the old man that languished as the sublime becomes more important.
Spaniard portrait artists
Great painters are Spain’s children, most of them, who at some point of their carreer developed oil portraits, a genre that was essentialy mandatory at the painting studios and schools, by the time. Juan Carreño Miranda, Federico Madrazo, Bartolome Trujillo, El Greco, Francisco de Surbaran, are well-known members of the spanish portrait, among so many others that delight us with some sort of painting, as of now, universal.
