Anthonis Mor is a Netherlandish artist better
known under his Spanish name Antonio
Moro. His life is very closely associated with Spanish painting. He worked
on the service of Cardinal Granvella, who introduced him to the Duke of Alba.
From that time he was much in demand as a leading portrait painter of the
European aristocratic society, the Court of Spain and the families closely
related to it. He was working in Portugal and in Spain. He became the Court
Painter for Philip II and accompanied him on his travels. Moro laid the
foundations of the type of representative Court portrait which remained
unchanged for a long period. They were full-figure portraits. It was actually
not entirely original. Moro delivered it from Titian’s Philip II which was
again based on the Habsburg type of Court portrait made by Jakob Seisenegger
(Charles V with a dog). He usually painted his models as semi- or full-figures
set against greyish-green background; the frontal lighting shed a unified cold
light on the figure. The paint is smooth, the brushwork fluent. The Roudnice portrait of an unknown member of the Mendoza
family (probably Diego Hurtado de Mendoza) shows all these features. It is a
smaller size portrait in which he used looser treatment than on the big
representative portraits.
Antonio Moro: Portrait of a member of the Mendoza family; oil on wood
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