PÉREZ, Bartolomé

Spanish painter and decorator. He was an outstanding pupil of his father-in-law, Juan de Arellano, whose daughter he married in 1663, and whom he succeeded as the most important representative of flower painting in Madrid. He enjoyed a successful career as a decorative painter, regularly working for the Teatro Real of the Buen Retiro (works lost today), for which services he was given the honorary title of Pintor del Rey in 1689.

Pérez specialized in paintings of bouquets and garlands of flowers. He also painted figures and earned a reputation as a designer and painter of theatrical and festival decorations at the court of Madrid. According to Palomino, who may have known Pérez, he collaborated with Arellano, sometimes painting the figures in his pictures. His most famous work in the field of flower painting was the Camón Dorado of king Charles II, a sumptuous bed-chamber constructed between 1689-1691. The decoration of this chamber was to consist of fifty-five flower paintings on panelGLOSSARYTerm in painting for a support of wood, metal, or other rigid substance, as distinct from canvas. Until the adoption of canvas in the 15th century nearly all the movable paintings of Europe were executed on wood, and even up to the beginning of the 17th century it is probable that as much painting was done on the one support as on the other. Painters who worked on a small scale often used copper panels (Elsheimer is a leading example), and in the colonial art of South America copper and tin and even lead and zinc were used. On a larger scale, slate has occasionally been used as a support, notably by Rubens for his altarpiece for Sta Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova) in Rome; the picture he originally painted was said to reflect the light unpleasantly and slate was used for the replacement to produce a more matt finish. For wood panels the Italian masters of the Renaissance preferred white poplar, while oak was the most common wood used in northern Europe. Many other types were used, however; analysis of the contents of art galleries has yielded a long list, including beech, cedar, chestnut, fir, larch, linden, mahogany, olive, and walnut. In the 20th century cedar, teak, and dark walnut are favourites, and modern painters have also used plywood, fibre-board, and other synthetic materials as supports. with gold backgrounds, some painted on both sides, of which twenty-seven appear to have been completed by Pérez himself.

Although as a painter of flower-pieces he must have been profoundly influenced by Arellano, Pérez showed a strong personality and independence in his earliest such paintings: for example in the signed Still-life of Flowers (1665, private collection), which shows an artfully arranged bouquet beside a bunch of unarranged flowers, Pérez reveals a delicacy of touch surpassing that of Arellano. In two flower-pieces the bouquets are arranged in bronzeGLOSSARYAn alloy of copper (usually about 90 per cent) and tin, often also containing small amounts of other metals such as lead or zinc. Since antiquity it has been the metal most commonly used in cast sculpture because of its strength, durability, and the fact that it is easily workable - both hot and cold - by a variety of processes. It is easier to cast than copper because it has a lower melting-point, and its great tensile strength makes possible the protrusion of unsupported parts - an advantage over marble sculpture. The colour of bronze is affected by the proportion of tin or other metals present, varying from silverish to a rich, coppery red, and its surface beauty can be enhanced when it acquires a patina. urns with reliefGLOSSARYA sculptural work in which all or part projects from the flat surface. There are three basic forms: low relief (bas-relief, basso rilievo), in which figures project less than half their depth from the background; medium relief (mezzo-rilievo), in which figures are seen half round; and high relief (alto rilievo), in which figures are almost detached from their background. decoration inspired by the AntiqueGLOSSARYthe classical age of Greece and Rome began with the Greek migrations of the 2nd millennium BC, and ended in the West in 476 AD with the deposition of the Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus (c. 475 AD); in the East it ended in 529 AD when the Platonic Academy was closed by Justinian (482 - 565 AD). (1666, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam; 1678, private collection). The full-blown blossoms are modelled with an extraordinary, velvety chiaroscuroGLOSSARYIn painting, the modelling of form (the creation of a sense of three-dimensionality in objects) through the use of light and shade. The introduction of oil paints in the 15th century, replacing tempera, encouraged the development of chiaroscuro, for oil paint allowed a far greater range and control of tone. The term chiaroscuro is used in particular for the dramatic contrasts of light and dark introduced by Caravaggio. When the contrast of light and dark is strong, chiaroscuro becomes an important element of composition. and are swept by a sense of movement unparalleled in Arellano's works. They were probably influenced by Italian flower paintings, such as those by Mario Nuzzi and Paolo Porpora. This influence can be seen in the signed Garland of Flowers with St Anthony (Madrid, Prado), in which the figures are probably by his own hand.

In 1689 he was appointed court painter by King Charles II. He died in 1693 when falling off a scaffold in 1698, working in the decoration of the palace of the Duke of Monteleón.