Sanchez Coelho, Alonso

Born in the Valencian city of Benifairo in the early 1530s. Childhood passed in Portugal . The Portuguese king Juan III learned about the young man's ability to paint, and sent him to Flanders to perfect himself in the arts. In Flanders, Sanchez Coelho lived for several years in the house of Cardinal Granvela, the patron saint of the artist Antonis Mora . He became a disciple of Mora.

In 1550, Sanchez Coelho returned to Portugal, to the court of King Juan III, where he worked for several years. When Pestilence came to Lisbon on diplomatic missions, he talked with his student.

In 1555, Sanchez Coelho moved to Spain. At the court of Philip II, he continued to study with Mora. After he quickly left Madrid for unknown reasons, Sanchez Coelho was appointed king's court painter.

Until his death in 1588, he remained in this position, taking advantage of the favor of the king and the attention of the aristocracy. The king was the godfather of two of his seven children. His post was inherited by his disciple Juan Pantocha de la Cruz .

Although Sanchez Coelho also painted religious paintings, many of which are stored in Escorial, they have no great artistic value. But his portrait work is quite important.

He left images of King Philip II , his children, the Infante Isabella Clara Eugenia and Katharina Michaela, Don Carlos, other family members, and nobles.

Style

The area of ​​work of Sanchez Coelho was an official portrait. Sanchez Coelho worked in the canons of the Spanish court portrait, which began to take shape thanks to Anthony Mor , when he worked for the Spanish king.

Sanchez Coelho, using a restrained approach to the model, followed in the footsteps of his Flemish teacher, borrowing formal methods from him (see Mor, Antonis ): statics, detail and thoroughness, an unadorned interpretation of the face of the representatives of the Habsburg dynasty , which is never famous for its beauty. The differences are caused by the characteristics of the artist himself: he was not so solid in the drawing, it can not be also plastically accurate when transferring volumes. But these shortcomings are transformed in his canvases and become an aesthetic value.

He gently and subtly conveyed gradations of light. I practically avoided going into chiaroscuro. Spanish art historians call him "the master of gray" - he was fluent in a range of gray and silver tones. This gives his canvases sophistication and elegance, and the barely noticeable idealization caused by these qualities reduces the realistic severity and physiology of his images. One of the greatest finds in Spanish painting is the habit he developed to use a neutral gray background in portraits (instead of landscape and interior backgrounds adopted in Italian Renaissance portraits).

He developed the canon of the Spanish court portrait: static, neutral background, model posing, thoroughness in the details of the costume, unsightly transfer of the appearance and physiological characteristics of the faces (without idealization).

His disciple Juan Pantocha de la Cruz made this canon even more formalized.

• Coelho (Sanchez Coelho), Alonso // Basket - Cucunor. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1953. - P. 184. - ( Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 51 vols.] / Ch. Ed. B. A. Vvedensky ; 1949-1958, vol. 23).
• C. Ponomareva. "Portraits of the Spanish kings of the XV — XIX centuries."

• Sanchez Coelho at Artcyclopedia
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