Quadratura in Madrid

The scientific and intellectual traits demonstrated by its main creators, much higher than that of other court artists, distinguishes the development of the Spanish School of quadratura painting as a technique to extol civil and sacred spaces during the reigns of Philip IV and Charles II. On an initial stage, the production of illusionistic architecture in Madrid, Valencia, or Saragossa, was in charge of cultivated masters such as Herrera The Younger, Francisco Rizi, Carreño de Miranda, Jiménez Donoso and Claudio Coello. The theorist and Pintor del Rey Antonio Palomino —who knew first hand Colonna and Mitelli’s quadratura works, was an admirer of Luca Giordano and turned into the earliest Spanish discloser of Andrea Pozzo— stood out as one of the major painters of the following generation. This model of pictor doctus (learned painter) would become a key figure in order to explain the consolidation and transmission of painted architecture in 1700’s Spain.