Renaissance Painting: Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531/32-1588)

Alonso Sánchez Coello was identical to Antonio Moro in his realistic and physiological grasp of the model by as a paintor he greatly surpassed him. He acquired the skill of painting in Portugal and continued his training under Antonio Moro in Flanders. He was sent there by John III, King of Portugal, whom Sánchez Coello portrayed. He worked at the Spanish Court at Valladolid. He kept a large studio and educated many pupils, whose share, often anonymous, makes it difficult today to distinguish and attribute Sánchez’s own works. As portraitist he possessed outstanding talent. His figures have natural postures standing at ease and are indicative of the social importance of the person depicted. His compositions are already influenced by advancing Mannerism. With his sense for psychological and convincing truthfulness of depiction Alonso Sánchez Coello showed himself an outstanding artist, in whose work the figures at the Court of Spain still live after all these centuries.

An example of Sánchez’s culminating style in portraiture is the portrait of Archduke Wenceslas (1577). The figure is set in an architectonically designed interior, standing by a chair. The duke stands out against the background as an open silhouette (his typical feature of portraits of men). Scattered light, the thin paint, and the characteristic smooth brushwork, the barely distinguishable strokes of the brush, it all makes it possible for this portrait to be used in attributing other works by Sánchez.

All these features appear in the portrait of María Maxmiliana of Pernstein with her little daughter. The composition is worked out in the form of a triangle (a feature of all Sánchez’s portraits of women). The painter suppressed all spatial effect and bodily outlines of the figures. The picture is divided into contrasting patches of colour and again he used fine scattered light.

The portrait of Queen Anne roused certain doubts in attribution, however used to be ascribed to Pantoja de la Cruz. The starting point for the composition is the standing figure in which the triangular composition reappears, based on one of Moro’s portraits of the year 1570 and Sánchez’s portrait of 1571 (both in Vienna today). The Vienna ones show the Queen at the age of about twenty, while on the Roudnice painting she is close to twenty-five. Very similar to our portrait is the portrait of the Queen in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, by Sánchez Coello. Apart from minor details the two are identical in age, posture, expression and technical aspects. X-Ray photos of the Roudnice picture show that here we have the same conception and treatment as on the portrait of Archduke Wenceslas by Sánchez Coello. Also only Sánchez would have been able to paint the Queen from model while Pantoja could have done so only from a copy (from his work is not known until nineties).

The Portrait of García Hurtado de Mendoza is one of the best works of world portraiture in view of its high artistic quality and magnificent portrayal. The painting is attributed to Sánchez Coello. It differs in style from his representative portraits and the attribution roused suspicions. This small-sized portrait showing only the bust is identical with the few surviving intimate portraits by the artist, in which the painter used other means than in his representative pictures. The face shows less tension, the expression is more direct, more lively. García Hurtado de Mendoza was Marquis of Cañete, Viceroy of Peru and Governor of Chile, the hero of the Ercilla’s epos La Araucana. His life story told by Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa in 1613 survives in the former Lobkovic Library.

The miniature bust of Philip II on a small round panel can be ascribed to the Circle of Sánchez Coello rather than to the artist himself. It depicts the King in armour after the victorious battle at Saint Quentin (1557). There are surviving three replicas attributed to Antonio Moro and Alonso Sánchez. Unfortunately, none of Sánchez’s miniatures mentioned in older literature have survived. The softness of modelling, the fine colours, the strength of expression and the loose brushwork speak in favour of attribution to his close circle.

The borderline between the work of Sánchez and Pantoja is formed by a pair of portraits of Fernando de Aragón y Gurea and Juana of Pernstein. They are usually ascribed to Juan Pantoja de la Cruz but always with some reservation and uncertainty. The picture of Fernando shows a masterly use of the tonal harmonies of grey, complemented by a few shades of golden ornaments and the restrained red of the ostrich feather. In the setting of the figures in architecturally barely defined space, in the details and posture the picture of Fernando is particularly close to that of his father Martín de Aragón and other members of his family in the collection of the Duke of Villahermosa at Pedrola made by Rolam de Mois. He was close to Sánchez as well as a painter as a person. This Flemish origin painter was very popular artist. It war related of him that “at the time there was not a single outstanding personality who did not have his portrait painted by him”. So far, however, his work and personality has not been known sufficiently for it to distinguish his work and to attribute other portraits to him.