Page 46 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

exemplified in the work of Fernando Gallego, a
painter from Salamanca who was a leading Cas-
tilian painter from about 1475 to around 1507. 20
Gallego's stock in trade was the retablo, a large
ensemble of panel paintings set within an archi-
tectural framework and erected behind the altar.
Retables lent themselves to corporate execution;
the master designed the compositions and then
delegated much of the execution to his assis-
tants. The collective labor of these works and
the patrons' apparent indifference to the mas-
ter's personal touch need to be kept in mind,
even if they make a mockery of our concern for
the division of artistic responsibility. This
approach was taken because retables did not
invite or permit close inspection of their con-
stituent parts; the distance between viewer and
object was too great, the illumination too mar-
ginal for this sort of studied contemplation.
Thus the painters had to simplify and exagger-
ate their models in order to ensure a modicum
of legibility for the worshipper. The term legi-
bility is intentional, for these images were
meant to be read: to provide instruction to the
faithful and not to be admired solely as aes- fig. 6. Fernando Gallego, Pieta.
thetic objects. With these considerations in Museo del Prado, Madrid
mind Gallego's intentions become obvious. He
set out to remake his sources of inspiration,
which were mainly works by Rogier van der the 1480$ it was enriched by the addition of Italian art at the Spanish court is particularly
Weyden, Dirk Bouts, and their followers. Italianate elements introduced in the work of baffling because the queen did patronize Italian
21
This process can be observed in Gallego's Pedro Berruguete. Berruguete was born at an scholars, notably Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who
Pieta, datable perhaps to around 1470, which unknown date in the agricultural town of was brought to Castile from Milan to establish
can be compared to a version of the composition Paredes de Nava, near Palencia, and was trained a school of humanistic studies. Yet Isabella
by Rogier van der Weyden executed some thirty in the Hispano-Flemish tradition. It is almost remained faithful to her northern artists until
years earlier and owned by Isabella of Castile. It certain that he traveled to Italy in the 1470$, her dying day.
is immediately evident that Gallego was thor- although the trip is not recorded. In 1483 he However, toward the end of her reign and
oughly indebted to his Flemish model for his was employed in the cathedral of Toledo execut- especially during the regency of Ferdinand
pictorial vocabulary: the bony, angular bodies, ing a work in fresco, a technique he could only (which ended with his death in 1516), the Italian
the studied, chiseled drapery, the composition of have learned in Italy. From then until his death Renaissance style began to make itself felt in
foreground figures set against the expansive in 1503 he received important commissions in Spain. Some of the principal sponsors of this
landscape all are appropriated from this source. Toledo and Avila, including three altarpieces in importation were members of an important
However, Gallego systematically schematized Santo Tomas, Avila, which was patronized by noble family, the Mendoza, who deserve to be
Rogier's composition, compressing the space, Ferdinand and Isabella and was the site of the counted among the great European art patrons
exaggerating the expression, and heightening tomb of their son, Prince Juan. of the fifteenth century.
the linearity of the Virgin's drapery. The colors Berruguete represents the leading edge of The Mendoza family originated in the prov-
are also transposed into a different key, with Italianism in Castilian painting, although he is ince of Alava and came to prominence in Castil-
22
tawny yellows and dusky tans replacing the rich clearly a hybrid artist. His experience in Italy ian politics after around 1400. A few years
reds and lush greens employed by Rogier. Fi- imposed a veneer of Renaissance style on his earlier they had been granted privileges in Gua-
nally, the landscape is altered to conform to panels, but at the core he was faithful to his dalajara, which became the family seat and the
local conditions and building styles. Thus the Hispano-Flemish origins. In the splendid series locus of some of their most important artistic
delicacy of emotion and execution in Rogier's of portraitlike biblical prophets executed for an enterprises. They negotiated their way through
work is converted into a sterner, starker image. altarpiece in his native Paredes de Nava (cat. the turbulent politics of fifteenth-century Cas-
Gallego stripped away the adornments of simu- 46), Berruguete aligned himself with the vigor- tile with shrewdness and agility, culminating in
lated architecture and sculpture and focused ous realism of northern European art. somewhat tardy but nonetheless effective sup-
attention on the image of the dead Christ and Throughout much of the fifteenth century, port of Ferdinand and Isabella. Under the rule
his grieving mother. Castilian artists and patrons were little of the Catholic Monarchs they enjoyed royal
This hardy, emphatic interpretation of Flem- informed or inspired by the renascent classicism favor and grew exceedingly rich and powerful.
ish painting spread into every corner of Castile, and innovative naturalism of Florentine art, The rise of the Mendoza to political promi-
where it remained dominant until the second which came into being as a response to the ideas nence was attended by their increasing presence
decade of the sixteenth century. However, in of Italian humanism. The lack of interest in in the world of arts and letters. Inigo Lopez de

EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 45