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Juan Sánchez Cotán (25. Juni 1560 – 8. September 1627) war ein spanischer Barockmaler, ein Pionier des Realismus in Spanien. Seine streng gemalten Stillleben werden zu den besten der Kunstgeschichte gezählt.
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[Bearbeiten] Leben
Sánchez Cotán wurde in Orgaz, einer Stadt nahe Toledo geboren. Er war befreundet mit und möglicherweise ein Schüler von Blas de Prado, einem Künstler der berühmt war für seine manieristischen und leicht realistischen Stillleben, deren Stil er weiterentwickelte. Am Anfang malte Cotán Altarbilder und andere religiöse Werke. Rund 20 Jahre lang ging er, gefördert vom städtischen Adel, einer erfolgreichen Karriere als Künstler in Toledo nach, während der er religiöse Szenen, Portraits und Stillleben malte. Die gebildeten Intellektuellen der Toledaner Gesellschaft erwiesen sich als empfängliches Publikum für diese Gemälde. Sánchez Cotán schuf seine bemerkenswerten Stillleben um die Wende des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beispiel hierfür ist Stillleben mit Quitte, Kohl, Melone und Gurke (1602, im San Diego Museum of Art), siehe oben rechts.
On August 10 1603, Juan Sanchez Cotan, then in his forties, closed up his workshop at Toledo to renounce the world and enter the Carthusian monastery of Paular. He continued his career painting religious works with singular mysticism. In 1612 he was sent to the monastery in Granada, he decided to become a monk, and in the following year he entered the Carthusian monastery at Granada as a laybrother. The reasons for this are not clear, though such action was not unusual in Cotán’s day.
Cotán was a prolific religious painter whose work, carried out exclusively for his monastery, reached its peak about 1615 in the cycle of eight great narrative paintings which he painted for the cloister of the Granada Monastery. These depict the foundation of the order of St. Bruno, and the prosecution of the monks in England by the protestants,
Although the painter’s religious works have an archaic air, they also reveal a keen interest in the treatment of light and volumes, and in some respect are comparable with certain works by the Italian Luca Cambiaso whom Cotán knew at the Escorial. While Cotán's religious works are unexceptional, as a still-life painter, he ranks with the great names of European painting.
In spite of his retreat from the world, Cotan’s influence remained strong. His concern with the relationships among objects and with achieving the illusion of reality through the use of light and shadow was a major influence on the work of later Spanish painters such as Juan van der Hammen, Felipe Ramírez, the brothers Vicenzo and Bartolommeo Carducci and, notably, Francisco de Zurbarán. Sánchez Cotán ended his days universally loved and regarded as a saint. He died in 1627 in Granada.
[Bearbeiten] Stil
Sánchez Cotán stylistically falls within the school of El Escorial, with Venetian influence, and his works can be placed in the transition from Mannerism to Baroque. He was an early pioneer of Tenebrism at the beginning of the golden age of Spanish painting. Although his religious paintings have a primitive sensitivity and a peaceful rhythm, Cotán's high stature in art history rests exclusively on his still lifes, of which only a few are extant. They have a severe naturalism unlike the prevailing artistic style.
[Bearbeiten] Stillleben
Sánchez Cotán established the prototype of the Spanish still life composed mainly of vegetables. Characteristically, he depicts a few simple fruits or vegetables, some of which hang from a fine string at different levels while others sit on a ledge or window. The forms stand out with an almost geometric clarity against a dark background. This orchestration of still life in direct sunlight against impenetrable darkness is the hallmark of early Spanish still life painting. Each form is scrutinized with such intensity that the pictures take on a mystical quality, and the reality of things is intensified to a degree that no other seventeenth century painter would surpass.
Some art historians describe Sánchez Cotan’s spare representations as abstemious images and link his work to his later monastic life. They are supposed to express a monastic denial of worldly pleasure and richness. However, his fruits and vegetables are arranged in beautiful ballet like compositions. The Carthusians are vegetarian, but many of his works contain game bird.
Sánchez Cotán never included humans beings in his still life paintings. Nor did he depict many of their artifacts, other than the strings from which vegetables and fruits dangle, this being the common means in the seventeenth century of preventing food and vegetables from rotting. Even if the objects are arranged so that they seem close enough to touch, they are nevertheless distanced. For all the realism with which they are depicted, the isolation of each object, heightened further by the black background, lends them a monumental, almost sculptural gravity.
[Bearbeiten] Bibliography
- Bendiner, Keneth: Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present, Reaktion Books, 2004, ISBN 1-86189-2136
- Lacotte, Michel: Larousse Dictionary of Painters, Mallard Press, 19901, ISBN 0792451325
- Lopez Rey, Jose Luis: Veláquez: Painter of Painters,Taschen, 1999, ISBN 382286538
[[Kategorie:Geboren 1560|Sánchez Cotán, Juan]] [[Kategorie:Gestorben 1627|Sánchez Cotán, Juan]] [[Kategorie:Spanische Maler|Sánchez Cotán, Juan]]
