Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1660 Spanish painter. He was one of the most important European artists of the 17th century, spending his career from 1623 in the service of Philip IV of Spain. His early canvases comprised bodegones and religious paintings, but as a court artist he was largely occupied in executing portraits, while also producing some historical, mythological and further religious works. His painting was deeply affected by the work of Rubens and by Venetian artists, especially Titian, as well as by the experience of two trips (1629-31 and 1649-51) to Italy. Under these joint influences he developed a uniquely personal style characterized by very loose, expressive brushwork. Although he had no immediate followers, he was greatly admired by such later painters as Goya and Manet  Related Paintings of Diego Velazquez :. | Vielle Femme Faisant frire des cenfs (df02) | Portrait of Fernando de Austria | St Jerome (df01) | Farmer meal | venus at her Mirror (df01) |
Related Artists:
Alfred Thorne
painted Insjolandskap med gard in 1886
Master of the View of st Gudule
active in Brussels 1470-1490
Antonio Ponce
Spanish, 1608-1662,Spanish painter. He had an undistinguished career in Madrid as a painter of still-lifes and flower-pieces. In 1624 Ponce was apprenticed to Juan van der Hamen y Leen, whose niece he married in 1628. The format of Ponce's compositions and some of his motifs derive from works by van der Hamen, though lacking their subtlety of composition, spatial clarity and formal conviction. In Vase of Flowers, signed and dated 1650 (Strasbourg, Mus. B.-A.), Ponce's style shows laboured imitation of van der Hamen's: his dry execution results in a paradoxically airless and petrified quality. Ponce was always a derivative artist, and some of his still-lifes with seasonal themes are similar to works by Francisco de Barrera, another modest painter with whom he was documented in the 1630s. Paintings from the 1640s and 1650s depicting baskets of fruit and bunches of grapes against light backgrounds are characterized by compositional informality, softer lighting and freer brushwork, through which Ponce attempted to convey the textures of objects and endow the subject with greater naturalness.