TRISTÁN DE ESCAMILLA, Luis

Spanish painter, active mainly in Toledo. He was born into a family of craftsmen. His father died when he was young, and some years later his mother, Ana de Escamilla, leased an inn in Toledo. He had several brothers, one of whom, Baltasar, was a Dominican friar and another (who called himself 'de Acevedo') was a landscape painter whose work is unknown. Around 1603 Tristán entered the workshop of El Greco as an apprentice, where he studied for several years, his name appearing until 1606 as witness in various documents and contracts relating to his master. He was a close friend of El Greco’s son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopoulos.

He is also known to have visited Italy, probably between 1606 and 1613. His style (notably his characteristically elongated proportions) owes much to El Greco, but Tristán is more sober, marking the transition from MannerismGLOSSARYA movement in Italian art from about 1520 to 1600. Developing out of the Renaissance, Mannerism rejected Renaissance balance and harmony in favor of emotional intensity and ambiguity. In Mannerist painting, this was expressed mainly through severe distortions of perspective and scale; complex and crowded compositions; strong, sometimes harsh or discordant colors; and elongated figures in exaggerated poses. In architecture, there was a playful exaggeration of Renaissance forms (largely in scale and proportion) and the greater use of bizarre decoration. Mannerism gave way to the Baroque. Leading Mannerists include Pontormo, Bronzino, Parmigianino, El Greco and Tintoretto. to a more naturalistic approach (The Adoration of the Shepherds, Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, 1620).