Círculo de José Antolínez

Circle of JOSÉ ANTOLÍNEZ (Madrid, 1635-1675).
"Purísima".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Size: 141 x 96 cm; 163 x 118 cm (frame).
José Antolínez was one of the most interesting artists of his generation who, due to his early death, could not reach the splendid maturity that his training foreshadowed. This does not prevent him from being considered a great representative of the full Baroque current that renewed painting at the Spanish court during the third quarter of the 17th century. In his work we can perceive the exquisite sensitivity for the recreation of Titian's manners - always so present in the Spanish painting of his time - combined with the reception of the elegant painting of the Nordic masters Rubens and Van Dyck, and the capture of the atmosphere of Velázquez. In this way, his technique is loose and vibrant, singularly seductive in the use of cold tones, which unfold in compositions full of vigorous movement and unstable activity. We know of his father's work as an artisan carpenter, when the family was established in Madrid's Calle de Toledo, although with a manor house in the village of Espinosa de los Monteros in Burgos. Palomino has conveyed to us the image of a person of a haughty and conceited nature, so aware of his own worth that he was often arrogant, an attitude that was to cause him a great deal of friction and quarrels with other colleagues. He was a pupil of Francisco Rizi, with whom he also fell out, although this did not prevent his painting from being highly appreciated by his contemporaries. He cultivated all genres: religious painting, landscape painting - of which there are no surviving examples - mythology, portraiture and genre painting. Also worthy of note in the field of portraiture are the two children's portraits in the Museo del Prado. These are works that show both the truthful closeness of the figures and the capturing of the atmosphere that surrounds them, to such an extent that they were considered works by Velázquez until recently when they were attributed to Antolínez by Diego Angulo. Of the canvases in the Prado Museum, "The Transit of the Magdalene" and the two children's portraits come from the royal collections and two of the Immaculate Conception belonged to the Museo de la Trinidad, while the third was acquired in 1931 from the funds bequeathed by Aníbal Morillo y Pérez, 4th Count of Cartagena.