Vicente Carducho

Bio

Carducho was one of the greatest artists of the Spanish Baroque period and his influence continued for many decades after his death through pupils such as Francisco Rizi. Like Cajés, Carducho was Florentine by birth and arrived in Spain with his brother Bartolomé whom he helped in the decoration of the Escorial for Philip II. Once he reached his maturity he worked at the court of Philip III in Madrid from 1606 and decorated the recently rebuilt Palacio del Pardo. His largest commission came from the Carthusian monastery of El Paular, near Segovia for which he painted a cycle of fifty-six pictures between 1628 and 1632. From 1626 he was Pintor del Rey to Philip IV. He painted three large canvases of the series commissioned by Philip to commemorate battles he had won since his ascent to the throne in 1621. As Palomino tells us he was highly esteemed by both Philip III and IV and was ‘so adorned with literary gifts, artistry and genius that Montalbán, in his Para Todos…,[1] writes that ‘the only thing that prevented Carducho from being one of the greatest artists praised by antiquity was having been born too late’.[2] Palomino also tells us that there has been no other eminent painter by whom there are as many public works.

[1]. J. Pérez de Montalbán, Para todos…, Madrid 1938.

[2]. A. Palomino, Lives of the Eminent Spanish Painters and Sculptors (trans. N.A. Mallory), Cambridge 1987, p.94.