Art in Spain (13th-17th centuries)


Introduction


The Gothic art of Spain represented a gradual development from previous Romanesque styles, being led by external models, first from France and then later from Italy. Eventually, the Italian influence, which transmitted Byzantine stylistic techniques and iconography, entirely displaced the initial Franco-Gothic style. In the 15th century, the more picturesque, refined 'International Gothic' developed, with purer colours and ornamental detail. The new style was disseminated in Catalonia, Valencia and Castile.

During the fifteenth century, the influence of Flemish painting was dominant. Flemish art was attractive to Spaniards, the great schools of painting, founded in Bruges, Ghent and Tournai, were admired for their moving expression of religious feeling. These factors stimulated the robust manner known as Hispano-Flemish painting. The hegemony of Flemish painting was to endure in parts of Spain well into the sixteenth century. However, in the closing decades of the fifteenth, the first waves of the Italian Renaissance were to arrive in Spain.

The Spanish Golden Age saw great development of art. Its start can be placed in 1492 with the end of the Reconquista and the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World, and it ended with the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The style forms a part of the wider Baroque period in art, although the distinctive nature of the art of the period also included influences that modified typical Baroque characteristics. These included influence from contemporary Dutch Golden Age painting and the native Spanish tradition, which give much of the art of the period interest in naturalism, and an avoidance of the grandiosity of much Baroque art.

In sculpture, the Plateresque style (a blend of Mudéjar, Gothic and Renaissance elements) extended from the beginning of the 16th century until the last third of the century, and its stylistic influence pervaded the works of all great Spanish artists of the time. Another period of Spanish Renaissance sculpture, the Baroque, encompassed the last years of the 16th century and extended into the 17th century. It reached its final flowering in the 18th, developing a truly Spanish school and style of sculpture, more realistic, intimate and independently creative than the previous one, which was tied to European trends, especially those of the Netherlands and Italy.


Top