Francisco Camilo (Madrid 1610–Madrid 1671) was a Spanish painter, the son of an Italian immigrant who had settled in Madrid. When his father died, his mother remarried, and Camilo became the stepson of the painter Pedro de las Cuevas.[1]
De las Cuevas brought Camilo up as his own son, teaching him to paint. At the age of 18, Camilo was asked to paint for the high altar of the Jesuits’ house at Madrid an image representing St. Francis Borgia (which was afterwards removed to make way for an altarpiece in plastic).
The Count-Duke of Olivares ordered Camilo to produce a series of paintings of Kings of Spain for the theater of Buenretiro. The Count-Duke also chose Camilo to adorn the western gallery of the palace with 14 frescoes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Primarily a painter of religious works, Camilo painted for the monasteries of Madrid, Toledo, Alcalá, and Segovia. He painted and draped some of the statuary of Manuel Pereyra.
Works
Scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (1641), Alcázar de Madrid, now destroyed
San Juan de Dios (1650), Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Durham, England
Saint Louis of France (1651), Sarasota Museum
San Jerónimo azotado por los ángeles (1651), Museo del Prado, Madrid
Martyr of Saint Bartholomew (1651), Museo del Prado
Adoration of the Kings (Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilba)
San Carlos Borromeo y los apestados, the New Cathedral of Salamanca
San Pedro consagrando a San Torcuato, Hospital Tavera, Toledo
San José con el Niño dormido, Huesca Museum
Altarpiece of Santorcaz (Madrid) (1656)
Altarpiece of Otero de Herreros (1659), Segovia
Altarpiece of the Virgin of Fuencisla (1662), Segovia
Conversion of Saint Paul, Provincial Museum, Segovia
Muerte de San Pablo Ermitaño, Museo del Prado
San Juan Bautista en orla de flores, private collection
Asunción de la Virgen (1666), Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
Adoration of the Shepherds, Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin
Statuary of Manuel Pereyra
Ascension, (1651), Museu Nacional d´Art de Catalunya
Notes
^William Stirling Maxwell, Annals of the Artists of Spain (J.C. Nimmo, 1891), 855–6.
Bibliography
García López, David (2008). Lázaro Díaz del Valle y las Vidas de pintores de España. Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española., p. 310 ISBN9788473927147.
Palomino, Antonio (1988). El museo pictórico y escala óptica III. El parnaso español pintoresco laureado. Madrid, Aguilar S.A. de Ediciones., p. 323 ISBN84-03-88005-7.
Pérez Sánchez, Alonso E., Baroque Paintings in Spain, 1600–1750 (Pintura Barroca en España, 1600–1750). Ed. Cátedra, Madrid (2009), 5th ed., ISBN978-84-376-0994-2
Various authors, Prefiguración Del Museu Nacional D'Art de Catalunya, Ed. Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (1992) ISBN9788480430043
Tabar Anitua, Fernando, "New attributions to Francisco Camilo and Francisco Herranz" ("Nuevas atribuciones a Francisco Camilo y Francisco Herranz, seguidor segoviano"), Spanish Arts Archive, Vol. 66, no. 263, 1993, p. 291–296.