LÓPEZ Y PORTAÑA, Vicente

Spanish painter. Primarily a portraitist, he was influenced by Mengs, whose style he continued into the 19th century.

In 1785 he entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia at the age of 13. Within four years the prodigious artist had won a number of prizes for his work, including his painting of Tobias Restoring his Father's Sight (today in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia) and was awarded a scholarship to the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. During his few formative years in Madrid he was strongly influenced by the work of the leading academicians, notably Mariano Salvador Maella and Gregorio Forro, whose style continued the tradition established earlier in the century by Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1790 López returned to Valencia and became vice-director of painting at the Academia. The majority of the artist's work from his early phase however is religious in subject matter.

In 1795 he married Maria Piquer, they had two sons: Bernardo López y Piquer and Luis, who were also painters, following their father's style but with little accomplishments. Following the death of his wife in 1814 however, López was summoned to Madrid by Ferdinand VII, to whom he was appointed Pintor de Cámara, and within a short time he was appointed first court painter, replacing Maella. (Ferdinand VII preferred him to Goya.) In 1817 he became director of the Academia of San Femando, and in 1823 director of the Prado.

Vicente López was a prolific painter executing many religious, allegorical, historic and mythological scenes, but he specialized in portraits. During his long career he painted nearly every notable person in Spain during the first half of the 1800s.

In 1826, López painted a portrait of Francisco Goya when the famous master visited the court from Bordeaux, where the Aragonese painter was then living. Goya was then 80 and would die two years later. This portraitGLOSSARYThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90). is one of López's most lively and best known works.

Vicente López spent the remainder of his life in Madrid painting portraits of statesmen, academics, and other important figures, as well as dramatic and emotional religious subjects. When he died he was court painter of Queen Isabella II. He was seventy eight years old.