VÁZQUEZ, Alonso
(b. ca. 1565, Ronda, d. ca. 1608, Mexico City)

Last Supper

1588-1603
Oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville

In addition to Italian influences, the impact of northern painters, such as Marten de Vos and Maerten van Heemskerck, on painters in Seville at the end of the 16th century was important. The resulting hybrid of Italian and Flemish elements became the dominant mode of expression until well into the seventeenth century and is first observable in the work of Alonso Vázquez, who worked in Seville from 1588 until his departure for Mexico in 1603. His Last Supper, painted for the Carthusians of Santa Maria de las Cuevas, is a pastiche of poses and motifs borrowed from prints by or after Heemskerck, de Vos and Cornelis Cort. In fact the stylistic correspondence to the paintings by these northern late Mannerists is close enough to suggest that Vázquez had been able to study their works, perhaps in the collections of the resident Flemish community.