JOSÉ DEL CASTILLO

(Madrid, 1737 – 1793)

Saint Charles Borromeo Adoring the Cross

1783

Oil on canvas

56 x 28 cm

2

PROVENANCE:

Private collection, Madrid

RELATED LITERATURE:

Painting in Spain in the Age of Enlightenment. Goya and his Contemporaries. Catálogo de

exposición. Indianápolis, Indianapolis Museum of Art, y Nueva York, Spanish

Institute, 1997, pp. 206-208 y 218. SAMBRICIO, V. de. José del Castillo. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez, CSIC, 1958. SAMBRICIO, V. de. «José del Castillo, pintor de tapices», Archivo Español de Arte, vol. XXIII,

Madrid, 1950, pp. 273-301.

LÓPEZ ORTEGA, Jesús. El pintor madrileño José del Castillo (1737-1793). Tesis doctoral.

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Depto. de

Historia del Arte II, 2014.

LÓPEZ ORTEGA, J. «Novedades en torno a la obra del pintor madrileño José del Castillo»,

Anales del Instituto de Estudios Madrileños, Madrid, LVII, 2017, pp. 135-160.

José del Castillo began his studies with José Romero and secured the protection of José de

Carvajal y Lancaster, Ferdinand VI’s chief minister. In 1751 Carvajal funded a trip to Rome

for the aspiring artist to study with Corrado Giaquinto, with whom Castillo continued to

work after the two moved to Madrid in 1753. As a grant student of the Real Academia de

Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Castillo returned to Rome where he remained from 1757 to

1764. Having completed his training he applied for work at the court and joined the Royal

Santa Barbara Tapestry Manufactory.

Castillo produced tapestry cartoons under the supervision of Anton Raphael Mengs,

initially copying compositions by Luca Giordano and Giaquinto. For subsequent works he

produced his own designs, depicting hunts and scenes of popular life inspired by

contemporary Madrid and including numerous scenes of children. These optimistic,

colourful works are filled with typical local people shown alongside the more elevated

social classes and in stylistic terms recall Francisco de Goya’s early tapestry cartoons. In

addition to his output for the Manufactory, Castillo worked with Andrés de la Calleja on

the restoration of Luca Giordano’s ceilings in the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1780 he

3

produced drawings for the illustrations for Don Quixote for the edition produced by the

Real Academia Española.

In 1785 Castillo was made an academician of merit at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de

San Fernando, becoming deputy director of painting in 1788. At this period the artist

produced a considerable number of paintings on mythological and religious subjects.

Among the most ambitious is The Embrace of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis, which is one of

a group of paintings that decorate the church of San Francisco El Grande in Madrid. In his

religious output Castillo alternated between the Rococo assimilated from Giaquinto and

the Neo-classical style imposed by Mengs. The latter is the aesthetic evident in this

previously unpublished Saint Charles Borromeo adoring the Cross, a small preparatory study of

1783 of which two large-format versions are known in Granada and Madrid.

El Soto de Roma, located near Fuente Vaqueros in Granada, was designed as a protected

woodland and forest for the reales maestranzas [aristocratic militias], the artillery and military

supplies in the early 17th century. From 1618 it was run by a series of governors who

answered to the Committee of Works and Forests. It was very poorly administered and in

1749 Ferdinand VI decided that its management should be placed in the hands of the

Secretary of State, appointing Ricardo Wall as governor. Subsequently, during the reign of

Charles III the construction of a parish church was approved, with intended space for

1,500 parishioners. The commission for the church’s design was awarded to the architect

Domingo Lois de Monteagudo. With regard to its decoration, a recent article by Jesús

López Ortega has provided detailed information on the commission of the various

canvases intended to embellish the interior.

In late 1783 the Count of Floridablanca instructed the relevant authorities in the royal

palace in Madrid to allow the Galician painter Gregorio Ferro (1742-1812) to make a copy

of Anton Raphael’s Mengs’s Annunciation for the high altar of the new church in Soto de

Roma.

Following this, the senior official in the Secretariat of State, Eugenio de Llaguno,

commissioned the Madrid painter Francisco Javier Ramos (1746-1817) to execute the

canvas for the altar to be located on the left aisle of the church. Finally, for the altar on the

right aisle, dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, José del Castillo was commissioned to

4

produce a large canvas measuring 4 varas high by two wide (334.8 x 167.4 cm) (fig. 1). Both

Ramos’s copy and Castillo’s painting are now in the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la

Encarnación in Fuente Vaqueros (Granada).

The second version of the painting of Charles Borromeo can be identified as the one that

presided over the altar in the chapel in the Hospital de San Carlos in the royal town of San

Lorenzo de El Escorial. This canvas, which disappeared many years ago, has recently been

located and identified by José Luis Vega Loeches in the offices of the Casa de la Cultura in

that town (278.8 x 168.1 cm) (fig. 2).

For López Ortega the two canvases reflect the same model and follow the prototype which

the artist painted as the right-hand scene in the lost portable oratory of the Infante Carlos

(1772), for which the preliminary study is now in the Museo Cerralbo (40.5 x 54 cm).

5

Fig. 1. José del Castillo, Saint Charles Borromeo adoring the Cross, 1783. Oil on canvas,

334.8 x 167.4 cm. Parish church of the Encarnación, Fuente Vaqueros, Granada.

Fig. 2. José del Castillo, Saint Charles Borromeo adoring the Cross, 1790. Oil on canvas,

278 x 185.5 cm. Casa de la Cultura, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid.