CAJÉS, Eugenio

Spanish painter and draughtsman of Italian descent, son of Patrizio Cajés who, together with Romulo Cincinnato in Rome in 1567, were engaged by the Ambassador to Philip III, to work at the Spanish royal court. Eugenio undoubtedly served his apprenticeship with his father, with whom he also collaborated on his earliest commissions. Eugenio Cajés's Meeting of Joachim and Anne (Madrid, Real Academia S Fernando) was probably painted for an altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. that his father contracted for in 1604. It reveals, in both the sense of monumentality and the rather mannered lines of the drapery, the influence of the frescoGLOSSARYWall painting technique in which pigments are applied to wet (fresh) plaster (intonaco). The pigments bind with the drying plaster to form a very durable image. Only a small area can be painted in a day, and these areas, drying to a slightly different tint, can in time be seen. Small amounts of retouching and detail work could be carried out on the dry plaster, a technique known as a secco fresco. paintings carried out by Pellegrino Tibaldi at the Escorial.