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About the year 1500 a number of talented painters were at work in the principal cities of southern and central Spain. Their art is often eclectic, comprising both Northern and Italian elements, with the balance weighted somewhat in favour of the latter.
In Seville some outstanding paintings were produced by Alejo Fernández. In 1496 he is reported in Córdoba, but soon afterward he moved to Seville, where he continued to live until his death in 1545. Strong in composition, Fernández was particularly skillful in handling his figures, which are distributed with imagination and judgment and modeled with unusual grace. The cities of Seville and Saragossa possess important examples of his work, in particular the Virgin of the Navigators from the Alcázar of Seville, in which the sober and balanced composition and the nobility of form foreshadow Zurbarán.
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