BAROQUE PAINTING FROM VALLADOLID

AWARD FOR THE BEST UNIVERSITY CO-PUBLISHING (2018), JOINTLY WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE PUBLISHING HOUSE, AWARDED BY THE UNION OF SPANISH UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING HOUSES (UNE). Among the 17th-century Spanish painting schools, the Valladolid school possessed characteristics that give it its own identity. Although the technical quality of its painters, around twenty of whom are studied here, did not reach the level of the Madrid or Seville masters, their output reflected an aesthetic in keeping with Castilian sobriety and the principles upheld at the time by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Throughout the Baroque period, the activity of this local school produced numerous works intended to satisfy the devotional or decorative needs of religious buildings or private interiors in the city, but it was also in great demand throughout the rest of Castile and the northern Spanish peninsula. The expressive restraint of its representatives barely gave way to the ostentatious and dynamic spirit of the full Baroque, preferring to move toward the use of late Renaissance solutions, derived from the use of prints, to effectively collaborate in the dissemination of the spiritual interests of the Catholic Church through valid models for prayer, the practice of sacraments, or new devotions in a perfect catechetical exercise. Undoubtedly, and despite its limitations, the pictorial environment of Valladolid generated profound artistic sentiments, very far from the ostentatious effects of the triumphalist Baroque, and expressed them with measured formulas perfectly suited to the mentality of a moderate and patient people, who knew how to understand the banality of the transitory and superficial, as well as the emotionality and transcendence of the inner world.