Tuesday, October 15, 2024

 Francisco Pradilla Ortiz
(1848 - 1921)
 
Francisco Pradilla Ortiz was a prolific Spanish painter famous for creating historical scenes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Pradilla_Ortiz


La reina Juana la Loca, recluida en Tordesillas con su hija, la infanta Catalina
(Queen Juana la Loca confined at Tordesillas with her daughter, the Infanta Catalina)
1906
Oil on canvas
85 x 146 cm
The Prado, Madrid
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/la-reina-juana-la-loca-recluida-en-tordesillas/2687023e-7056-4290-babf-8b2879f07827

“In keeping with his interest in Queen Juana “la Loca,” Pradilla painted this painting of the queen´s confinement in Tordesillas Castle, where she spent the rest of her life alongside the cadaver of her husband. Juana sits besides a window in a palace room with a Gothic fireplace. Lost in thought, she gazes at the viewer without noticing her daughter´s play. A lady in waiting and a servent on the right contemplate the scene with some sadness. An open door in the background offers a view of the coffin with the body of Felipe “el Hermoso.” Pradilla abandoned the grandiloquence of enormous history paintings from earlier decades in order to make a small cabinet painting. The studied setting, archeological and historical knowledge used here with a certain eclecticism of clothing and furnishings, are combined with a finished and very polished technique. Those aspects prevent this work from being considered a sketch for a larger painting on the same subject, making this a magnificent example of Pradilla´s new pictorial tendencies with regard to history paintings: small format works.”

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 Francisco Pradilla Ortiz (1848 - 1921)   Francisco Pradilla Ortiz was a prolific Spanish painter famous for creating historical scenes. htt...