José García Hidalgo

JOSÉ GARCÍA HIDALGO (Villena, 1645-Madrid, 1717).
"Saint Augustine and the Child of the shell".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 53.5 x 82.5 cm; 69.5 x 99 cm (frame).
The painting shows a natural landscape, with hardly any vegetation, and a break of glory in the sky, not too striking, perhaps alluding with the light to the Holy Spirit. On the ground is the saint, standing, dressed in black with a nimbus on his head. At his feet can be seen the Child, holding a shell in his hand and with the other pointing to the sky. The quality of the work and the subject matter invite us to think of José García Hidalgo who made a set of 27 paintings on the "Life of St. Augustine" to decorate the main lower cloister of the Convent of San Felipe el Real (Madrid), many of which are in the collection of the Prado Museum. In fact, the museum itself points out that "This set was commissioned to José García Hidalgo, who would do it, apparently in collaboration with Alonso del Arco, between 1663 and 1711. The works related to this cycle belong to the collections of the Museo del Prado. The main iconographic source for García Hidalgo's work were the prints of the Flemish engraver Schelte Adams Bolswert, which have helped to correctly identify many of the scenes of the cycle, whose iconographic motifs had been forgotten and confused since the time of the Disentailment."
José García Hidalgo (1645 or 1646 - 1717 or 1719) was a renowned baroque painter and chamber painter to King Philip V. He was called by the artists of the time El Castellano. He began his artistic education in the city of Murcia with Mateo Gilarte and Nicolás de Villacis. After spending some years under the tutelage of these masters, he moved to Italy in 1660, and in Rome he became a student of Giacinto Brandi. Pietro da Cortona, Salvator Rosa and Carlo Maratti influenced the artist stylistically and technically. He returned to Valencia to study at the academy of Santo Domingo and later moved to Madrid in 1674 where he began as an apprentice to Carreño de Miranda. In 1674 he went to Madrid and Charles II commissioned him a series of twenty-four paintings on the life of St. Augustine for the cloister of San Felipe el Real, which occupied him, along with other commissions from the king, until 1711. He was also requested by Philip V, who named him his principal painter in 1703, and shortly afterward a knight of the order of St. Michael. At the end of his life he retired to the convent of San Felipe, where he died probably in 1719. He published Principios para estudiar la nobilísima arte de la Pintura (1691) and other works on anatomy and painting for the benefit of students. His productions are in Madrid, Valencia, Sigüenza, San Jago and Guadalaxara.