Claudio Coello

Claudio Coello (Madrid, 1642-1693) was a Spanish painter, outstanding representative of the full baroque of Madrid. Formed in 1683, Francisco Rizi was appointed painter of King Charles II, in which he will undertake his most important work: The Adoration of the Sacred Form of the Sacristy of the Monastery of El Escorial. Painter of great altar cloths for the churches and convents of Madrid and its surroundings, was also painter al fresco and ephemeral architectures always with great scenographic sense.

Born in Madrid, he was baptized on March 2, 1642 in the church of Santos Justo y Pastor. Son of Faustino Coello, Portuguese broncist, natural of the bishopric of Viseo, and of Bernarda de Fuentes, deceased in 1681, widow already and attended in its last wills by its son Claudio. His father descended "from that illustrious family of Coellos, where the great Alonso Sánchez Coelllo was also," according to Palomino, 2 whose biography is the only source of information available for the first years of life Painter, with whom he became friends. He began to study drawing in the workshop of Francisco Rizi, where his father had placed him to help him in his work, but seeing Rizi the use of the young apprentice recommended his father to allow him to continue with the study of painting. Of his passage by the workshop of Rizi have remained some anecdotes narrated by the Cordovan biographer and a physical description of the painter. Palomino tells that a religious, before whom the master had praised the disciple, replied that the boy's countenance did not reveal great ingenuity, to which Rizi replied: "Well, Father, virtues overcome signs." And Palomino concluded: "The truth is, that the countenance was not very pleasing, and in addition to this, it was sad and melancholy; But the spacious forehead, and the eyes alive, and reconcentrated, showed to be of sharp, speculative, and cogitative genius. "

First works:
The first signed and dated work known as Jesus Child at the Door of the Temple (1660, Museo del Prado), a work of youth, unlike what was done in Madrid, copies a lost painting by Jacques Blanchard, known by an engraving of Antoine Garnier. Since the engraving is inverted, it is possible that Coello knew the original painting or some other direct copy of it. Only a year later, Christ served by the angels (private collection) better shows some of the features that will be characteristic of the mature painter. The face and hands of Christ bear certain similarities with another early work signed "Claudius fac.": The entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (Museum of the University of Valladolid) of small size and vacillating anatomies, which has made it possible to be treated Of a sketch with a destiny ignored, 7 although its finish is not proper of a sketch, being able to be a work destined to the private devotion.

From 1663, the vision of St. Anthony of Padua in Norfolk (Virginia), Chrysler Museum of Art, which is known as an autograph copy with slight variants in private collection in Madrid, incorporates for the first time the architectural backgrounds in perspective and the angelotes fluttering Will constitute another hallmark of his painting. There is no information of its origin and it is only known that it was exhibited in the Spanish Gallery of the Louvre and that was sold in 1853 with the collection of Louis Philippe of Orleans.

The knowledge of the royal collection is evident in the two works dated in 1664 that have been preserved: the Triumph of St. Augustine of the Museo del Prado and Susana and the old ones of the Museum of Art of Ponce, authentic masterpieces, painted with only 22 Years, in which, together with the opulent sensuality of Rubens and a harmonious range of bright colors of flamenco origin on the intense blue of the sky, a juicy although reduced landscape and fragments of monumental architecture indebted to the Veronese, one notices the knowledge of Titian, Manifested in the sensual nude of Susanna and the libidinal faces of the elderly, personally casting Venetian and Flemish models. The Triunfo de San Agustín is a good example of the great altar canvas characteristic of Madrid's Baroque full, a resource of baroque pictorial speech directed to the senses, and from the convent of San Nicolás de Tolentino of the Augustinian Recollects of Alcalá de Henares. Intended to stir and impress, which will provide Coello with some of the most important tasks of his career.

Also in 1664 he met Juan de Valdés Leal when the Sevillian traveled to Madrid to study the paintings of the royal collections and the monastery of El Escorial, of which Palomino had news by Coello himself, who had informed him that in Madrid Valdés Regularly attended the academy and "drew two or three figures every night [...] gallantry, which many have executed for bizarre". According to a well-known anecdote narrated by Palomino, Coello remained in the master's house in these years and when he painted the Discovery of the true Cross for the main altar of the primitive parish of Santa Cruz, Rizi offered to sign the canvas with his name because Would pay better, but Coello preferred public recognition to economic interest. Already in the eighteenth century the paintings of the high altar - and the fresco paintings which the presbytery and the Chapel of the Executed of the same church painted with José Jiménez Donoso - have preserved the contract, dated June 1666, and The letter of payment of 4000 reais granted by Coello on August 28 of the same year. Signed and dated in 1666, an Annunciation was preserved. It was from the collection of the Count of Casal, in which the architectural space acquired extensive development and the light, coming from different points, generated audacious contraluces in the figure of the angel. At this moment, probably, belongs also the Apostle St. Philip painted for one of the altars of the Cruiser of the Royal Monastery of Santa Isabel, since it is stated that in 1664 the polychrome of the altars was contracted with Toribio García. The image of the whole-body apostle in the foreground, with the scene of his martyrdom in the distances, is again a monumental figure of great strength and movement, although the picture is known only by an old photograph when it was destroyed in the fire Of the monastery at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936), along with the remaining works of art that housed and the Immaculate Conception of Ribera that occupied the main altar, to which Coello repainted the head for having understood the nuns that in her Valencian had portrayed his daughter, seduced by Juan Jose of Austria according to the legend. 18

Paintings for the Convent of San Plácido:
Founded in 1623 by Teresa Valle de la Cerda and protonotario de Aragón Jerónimo de Villanueva on the site occupied by a small temple dedicated to San Plácido, annexed to the Benedictine abbey of San Martín, the Monastery of Benedictine nuns placed under the invocation of the Incarnation , Popularly known as Convent of San Placido, crossed in its first years of existence by serious difficulties when the founding nuns and their chaplain were prosecuted along with some other friar of San Martin by the tribunal of the Inquisition. Even after the nuns were acquitted in 1638, the Count of Olivares's fall from grace in 1643 dragged Villanueva, the convent's patron, against whom the inquisitorial process was reopened. Villanueva, who died in 1653, was his nephew of the same name who assumed the patronage of the convent and the construction of the new temple, on the cover of which was his coat of arms. Lacking documentation on its construction, it is Fray Lorenzo de San Nicolás himself who declares himself the author in the second part of his treatise On the Art and Use of Architecture published in 1665, where he affirmed that his dome was the second of the rows Of Madrid, after the one of the Imperial College of the brother Bautista. In 1661, its construction was to be completed, when the ironworks were completed, and immediately the fresco was painted in the dome and pechinas in charge of Francisco Rizi.

The documentation relating to the paintings of Claudio Coello in the church has not been preserved either, but the great Annunciation of the main altarpiece (7.50 x 3.66 m) and the Vision of Santa Gertrudis in the central street of the altarpiece on the right side Of the ship, are signed and dated in 1668. They are, according to Palomino, the first "that he brought forth while still in the house of his master ... in which he shows well the bravery of his spirit and the great genius, Who was assisting him. " The almost intact church is conserved, it forms one of the most remarkable baroque sets of the Madrid of the Austrias and the unique one of that scale of the painted by Coello that is conserved in its original location.

With the Annunciation of the greater altarpiece, work of Pedro de la Torre, the paintings of the collateral altars of Santa Gertrudis on the right and saints Benito and Scholastica on the left, with eleven paintings each and some very blackened, form the commission. They emphasize in them the small scenes of the Passion in the predella and the Samson with the lion of the door of the tabernacle, painted with sketched and vibrant brushstroke learned of Rizi.

From the great canvas of the Annunciation, or more properly owned by the Incarnation of the Virgin with the prophets and sibyls who announced it, some preparatory drawings and two sketches are preserved,

From the great canvas of the Annunciation, or more properly owned by the Incarnation of the Virgin with the prophets and sibyls who announced it, some preparatory drawings and two sketches are conserved, at least one of them also signed in 1668 and very possibly finished As a model of presentation of the definitive work, which reveals the careful preliminary study conducted by Coello, for which he should also have the iconographic advice of someone with theological knowledge and provide him with the Latin texts carried by Old Testament prophets and sibyls Of the Greco-Roman tradition. Among them is Isaiah, with a table in which appears the inscription "ECCE VIRGO CONCIPIET ET PARIET FILIVM VOCAVITVR NOM [EN] EIVS EMMANVEL ISAÍAS", taken from Isaiah 7,14; Jeremiah, with the inscription "CREAVIT DOMINVS NOVVM SVPER TERRAM" (Jeremiah, 31,22), and the black Erythea sybil, with a phylactery in which appears inscribed "REX SANCTVS VEN ...". In addition, another unidentified one carries a picture with the image of the Immaculate and a third a tape that reads "DE VIRGINE NAS [CE] TVR ... PVER", all of them at the foot of a staircase leading to the Main scene of Mary announced with the archangel Saint Gabriel, flown by God the Father and Holy Spirit among a choir of angels. As a source for the composition of Coello has been pointed out the existence of a sketch of the same subject painted by Rubens (Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania), never moved to a definitive composition, which has been speculated with the possibility of being painted with this Same destination some years ago. Coello, however, and although he was inspired by the three-level composition in this sketch or in an earlier engraving by Cornelis Cort from Federico Zuccaro frescoes in Santa Maria Annunziata in Rome, he created an entirely personal and powerful image . Very significant in this sense is the use of Solomonic columns in sketches, in which he painted the architectural framing in the manner of a theatrical opening, unlike the Corinthian columns that have the altarpiece of Pedro de la Torre. 24

1669-1674: painter al fresco in Madrid and Toledo:

In the years after these works for San Placido, easel and oil paintings are scarce. Only two paintings dated in 1669 are preserved: Christ presenting the Virgin to the Fathers of the Limbo, in a French private collection, whose staggered composition evokes that of the Annunciation of St. Placid, 25 and The Virgin and Child adored by saints and The theological virtues of the Prado Museum. This, although understood within the traditional genre of the sacred Italian conversations and with notable precedents, is a very well-worked painting, of which two studies are known before pen and aguada (Prado and Museum of the Louvre) alternating the positions of the saints While looking for a better effect. By similarity may also correspond to these years, or shortly before, the Virgin and Child worshiped by Saint Louis King of France and other saints (Museum of the Prado), oil painted Palomino for Don Luis Faures, the guard of royal archers , With the rich colors learned from the study of palace paintings.

Here too the vault of the sacristy, with stories of the life of Saint Ignatius, equally destroyed, and Coello in solitary the dome and pechinas of the chapel of the Holy Christ, with passionary angels and medallions with grisly prophets in the pechinas, paintings Dated by Elías Tormo in 1673, these yes conserved.

In August 1672 Coello and Donoso hired the paintings of the hall "where their majesties went to see the bullfights" in the House of the Bakery, rehabilitated after the fire that year, together with the paintings of the staircase and the Antechamber, these lost. The contract stipulated that the paintings, according to Palomino, were to be completed before March of 1674 and by them the painters would receive 1. ducats each. 30 A sketch of the "ceiling for the Madrid Bakery" painted by Coello was preserved in the Buen Retiro Palace, according to the inventory of 1794. The painting there, as a royal salon, is the arms of the monarchy carried by the allegories of The cardinal Virtues floating among trumpeter angels in the sky, which opens a feigned architecture and medallions painted in grisaille in which six of the works of Hercules, mythical founder of the Hispanic monarchy.

Similar to this, although the feigned architecture opens up to the sky in an oval form, it is the roof of the small vestry or cloister of the cathedral of Toledo, with angels children carrying in flight the staff and miter, paintings by which between June and August Of 1674 collected 10 000 ducats.

1675-1679: at the service of the Church:
The 2 of March of 1674 contracted the paintings of the altarpiece that Jose Ratés was constructing for the church of San Juan Evangelista of Torrejón de Ardoz. The contract stipulated that the paintings should be completed in August 1675. Only a few days after signing this contract, on March 14, he married the church of Santa Cruz with Feliciana de Aguirre Espinosa, the daughter of a sheriff. The marriage was unhappy. In November 1675 Feliciana died leaving a six-month-old son, Bernardino, who was sent to relatives in San Sebastián de los Reyes, and in January 1678 Coello renounced his inheritance in favor of the deceased's mother, « Considering the short means with which it remains.

The contract for Torrejón de Ardoz established that for the central body of the altarpiece was to paint Coello the martyrdom of St. John the Evangelist in the tub of boiling oil or St. John before Portam Latinam, in addition to painting an Apotheosis of St. John of smaller size for the body Superior and four paintings of subject not specified for the "great custody" and door of the tabernacle. The church burned in the civil war (1936) and with the fire the altarpiece was lost, but the great cloth was saved with the martyrdom of the saint (595 x 300 cm) preserved now in the reconstructed church. We also know two previous studies that help us to understand Coello's way of working, starting with a first idea drawn in pencil with a quick stroke and reinforced with a pen, with which alternatives are suggested at the time, until reaching the definitive model to be presented To the approval of the client, on which a grid is drawn to facilitate the transfer to the canvas. 35

Signed in 1676 there are two unknown fabrics known: Christ and the Magdalene at Simon's house (private collection), with obvious memories of the Venetians and especially of Veronese and Tintoretto in the ample architectures and anecdotal details that surround the main scene , And one of several versions of the Immaculate (Castres, Goya Museum). From 1677 only one: The appearance of the Virgin of the Pillar to Santiago the Greater (San Simeón (California), Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument). It is possible that in these years he was also engaged in some of the numerous paintings that Palomino attributes to him in churches in Madrid from which nothing has arrived, such as the pechinas of the chapel of Santa María of the Seven Dolores in the college of Santo Tomás, The ones that Sebastián de Benavente contracted in 1676 the marks. Also to these years can correspond the paintings of San Ignacio de Loyola and San Francisco Javier painted for the church of Our Lady of the Assumption of Valdemoro, that Palomino quotes "of the size of the natural one", placed to the sides of the door of the sacristy , Preserved but lacking documentation to determine the date of his painting.

Three important events in Coello's life occurred in 1677: in February he was involved in a resumption of the litigation that the painters of Madrid held against the Brotherhood of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows for the obligation that had long been contracted by members of the guild To process the image of the Virgin by Holy Week in procession, which a majority of painters ended up interpreting as incompatible with the dignity of his office; 39 in August he contracted second nuptials with Bernarda de la Torre, who lived in Madrid with some uncles and Brought to the marriage a modest dowry of 2000 ducats of fleece, 40 finally, in November signed with Pedro de Villafranca letter of payment worth 16 500 reais for the restoration of the frescoes of the Battle Room of the Monastery of El Escorial, work That obtained thanks to the mediation of its friend Juan Carreño de Miranda and that supposed the first direct order of the crown.

Painter of the King:
After the commemorative celebrations Coello had to return to his oil and fresco works for churches and convents, although documents and works signed for these years are scarce. The Virgin of the Relief of the Benedictine monastery of San Martín Pinario in Santiago de Compostela may have been, although the apparent date of the signature (1618) was interpreted as 1681 or as 1678. In 1682 the great altar canvas of the Ecstasy of Santa María Magdalena in the church of Santa María Magdalena de Ciempozuelos (Madrid), in which the painter seems to pay homage to the picture of the same subject of José de Ribera now in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. The frescoes of the Madrid churches of the Trinitarios Calzados and San Basilio, in collaboration with Donoso, and the oils of The Martyrdom of San Plácido and The Mystical Marriage of Saint Gertrudis painted for the Benedictine monastery of the Incarnation in Corella (Sacred Art Museum of Corella, Navarre), to which the mother Paula Manuela of the Ascension had moved, who had been abbess of the convent of San Plácido when Coello worked in it. An Immaculate Conception preserved in the closure of the convent of Agustinas Recoletas of La Calzada de Oropesa had to be painted also in these years, according to a somewhat confused document dated in 1683 by which Coello, Donoso and Ratés opposed the pretension of The priory of the convent that claimed the painting painted by Coello, as said this by order of Jose de Acedo. It is confirmed by the testament of Acedo, who died in February 1683, in which he claimed to have commissioned Coello three paintings, two of them on account of the convent, which he had not finished paying. Its slender figure and dynamic silhouette is characteristic of Coello's abundant production of immaculate, of which we can highlight the signed Supreme Court.

On March 30, 1683, he was appointed painter of the king in the vacancy left by Dionisio Mantuano, free of charge, which he would not receive until two years later, but obliged to pay the average annata. Already as a painter of the king signed the beautiful Saint Catherine of Alexandria of the Wellington Museum combines models and colors of Guido Reni with those of Anton van Dyck. However he did not stay long in Madrid. After baptizing to its son Cristóbal Juan the 1 of August marched to Saragossa to take charge of the decoration of the church of the school of Augustinian Recollects of Santo Tomás de Villanueva, well-known popularly like of the Mantería. There he worked until 1685 in the painting of the walls and the six domes of the temple, with his drums and pechinas, with the help of Sebastián Muñoz, who had been his disciple before leaving to Italy to complete his training in the workshop of Carlo Maratta. Centered on the figure of Saint Thomas of Villanueva and the exaltation of the Order of St. Augustine between feigned architectures, garlands and angels, the paintings have arrived in poor condition, having undergone an aggressive restoration in 1950 and the collapse of one of their Summits in 2001.

From accepting the chronological sequence proposed by Palomino, on his return from Saragossa "he executed the great picture of Santo Domingo, with Our Lady of the Rosary, which is in the church of the convent of this name (commonly called the Rosarito, on Calle Ancha de St. Bernard of this Court) and is placed in the presbytery, next to the Gospel. The painting, now conserved in the museum of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where it entered in 1818, maintains something simplified the composition in three levels of the Annunciation of San Plácido, with the saint in the top of a staircase and receiving The rosary from the hands of the Virgin and Child to which some devotees kneel at their feet. For the same convent in Madrid he also painted four other paintings for the collateral altars, although they had already been moved to other convent premises: Saint Jacinto and Saint Catherine of Siena, which are not preserved, and what he calls "old collateral" : Santo Domingo de Guzmán and Santa Rosa de Lima, now in the Museum of the Prado in which they entered from the Museum of the Trinity formed with works of the disentailed convents. With a similar resource to the one employed in the Virgin of Socorro of the church of San Martín Pinario, justified in this case because it is the portrait of an image of bundle much revered in Benedictine monasteries, Coello places the saints on cantilevered peanuts and with a point Of very low view, as if of statues were, sheltered under a section of vaulted architecture with curtains but open to the bottom to an intensely illuminated landscape with which it breaks the appearance of niche and gives life to the monumental figures.

The Adoration of the Sacred Form and the appointment of camera painter:
In August 1685, a few days after Francisco Rizi died, he was assigned a salary as a painter of the king. It must also have been at that moment when he was entrusted with the painting of the Adoration of the Sacred Form in which Rizi had begun to work for the sacristy of the monastery of El Escorial. Coello should not have liked what his master had begun, according to Palomino, because he found the point of view to be very high, so that "he had to lower it, and make a new composition, that he made an admirable scar." The canvas is, among other things, a group portrait on the occasion of the exposition of the Sacred Form officiated by Father Francisco de los Santos, prior of the monastery, in the presence of King Charles II and members of the court, forcing To Coello to make portraits of all the participants in the ceremony. Palomino, who had made no previous mention of portraits painted by Coello, will say for this reason that it was a picture "of incredible work and study." The portraits of Charles II, somewhat idealized, and of Father Santos in the castle of Nelahozeves (Czech Republic), although very finished, have sometimes been interpreted as preparatory studies for the painting of El Escorial with which also the portrait of the duke Of Medinaceli of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, the character that in the composition of El Escorial appears immediately behind the king, although in the individual portrait it is presented before a background of landscape. The stage where the ceremony takes place is the same sacristy in which the painting hangs. Its placement on the altar of the wall of noon meant the displacement of the Pearl of Raphael from the privileged place that had assigned Velázquez. Some of the paintings that hang from the walls are identified - the Lavatory of Tintoretto and The Virgin and Child between San Antonio de Padua and San Roque de Titian, now in the Prado, and Christ and the adulterous woman of Anton van Dyck, preserved In the Hospital of the Venerable Third Order, paintings actually located at the time in the sacristy and in the same places they occupy in the Sacred Form, 64 but Coello did not attempt to create effects of an illusionist perspective. The realism of painting is interrupted, on the other hand, in its upper part, where the allegories of Religion, Divine Love and Royal Majesty fly according to the Iconology of Cesare Ripa, and some little lovebirds play on a curtain collected, as if Backdrop of a theatrical scenario.

The 31 of December of 1685 swore the position of vacant painter of camera by death of Juan Carreño de Miranda. If, as Palomino says, the appointment rewards the portrait of the king made during a visit of the monarch to the monastery, it must be one of those previous studies, of which some other copy is known, since Coello worked in the Sacred Form until 1690 , When he signed her as a chamber painter. It is in this charge that he painted some portraits and "other things of the obligation of his employment: as in repairing and cleaning the paintings, which were very deteriorated from the smoke of the lights and taken from time." It consists of Palomino who portrayed the Queen Mother, Mariana of Austria (Munich, Alte Pinakothek and Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum) and Mariana of Neoburgo, second wife of Carlos II (lost). On behalf of the latter, to whose collection he belonged, he could have painted the portrait of Father Cabanillas, a Franciscan religious, with a long bundle (Museo del Prado). The one of Nicolasa Manrique (Madrid, Valencia Institute of Don Juan), according to the age of the person portrayed, must be 1690 or a little later, at which time also, for fashion in the costumes, belong the Portrait of a Young man from the Goya Museum in Castres and the portrait of Doña Teresa Francisca Mudarra y Herrera, wife of Juan de Larrea, Secretary of State and the Universal Office of Carlos II (Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao), with refined touches of elegance and luxury Characteristic of the courtly portrait of the moment.

As part of his role as a chamber painter, in 1686 he was called to fresco the ceilings of the Queen's remodeled room in the Gallery of the Cierzo del Real Alcazar. The theme chosen was that of the fable of Psyche and Cupid. Coello traced the basic lines of fake architecture and the ornamentation of the frames and provided the models of the stories, but soon after he returned to El Escorial to continue painting the Sacred Form leaving the frescoes to Palomino. In September 1688 he still collected some sums for these paintings, as ordered by the Queen herself, Marie Louise of Orleans. But at his death, in February 1689, the catafalque project for funeral funerals presented by Coello was postponed in front of Churriguera.

Last years:
After the Adoration of the Sacred Form there is no precise news of works done for the court. Although a few days after his wife died, his widow took five portraits commissioned by Mariana de Neoburgo, the second wife of Charles II, in preparation for his entry in Madrid, and the arrival in Spain of Luca Giordano in 1692 to paint the Cool the staircase of the monastery of El Escorial caused a deep disappointment.

On the contrary, it should not have been lacking the work for churches and convents mainly outside Madrid. In January 1691 he wrote Father Matilla of the convent of San Norberto de Madrid apologizing for having interrupted a work, of which no other news is known, because of his poor health. Also in 1691 he was appointed painter of the cathedral of Toledo and signed "CLAVDIVS A COELLO PIGNOR [sic] REGIS" Coronation of the Virgin of the end of the main altarpiece of the parish church of La Calzada de Oropesa, of trapezoidal format to adapt to the shell Of the apse, flanked by two other canvases with musician angels also from his hand. There is no certainty, however, that the large-format canvas of the Assumption of the Virgin that occupied the main body of this altarpiece, burned in the civil war (1936) and replaced by a modest copy from photographs , Which could have been painted by Donoso. 77 The same year he signed the San Juan de Sahagún painted for the disappeared convent of San Agustín de Salamanca together with a Saint Thomas of Villanueva, both preserved in the church of Carmen de Abajo of that city. According to the account of Palomino, the last thing that ended was The martyrdom of St. Stephen - which some seemed little martyrdom - painted on behalf of Fr. Pedro Matilla, confessor of the king, to be placed on top of the main altarpiece of the church of San Esteban de Salamanca, the work of José Benito de Churriguera. When the painting was completed, the Cordovan biographer, with his brilliant colors, was exposed in a palace where he was seen by Giordano, "who seemed very well; And rightly so, because it is an excellent picture. " Witness the immediate success of the painting is also the existence of a good copy, probably painted in the workshop of Coello, in the main altarpiece, also the Churriguera, the parish church of San Esteban de Fuenlabrada.

Coello gave power to his wife on April 15, 1693 to dictate his will according to what they had spoken and died five days later, being buried in his parish of San Andres. He left his children Bernardino, born of the first marriage, and Juan Cristóbal, whom he treated as a priest perhaps, Miguel, Tomás, Juana, Felipa and Manuela, the last two of three and a year respectively. The inventory of his assets included a collection of paintings made up of 180 entries, which were commissioned by Teodoro Ardemans and Manuel de Castro, both disciples of Coello. Much of the work had to be the models and sketches of his own paintings, along with a significant number of copies of Rubens, Tiziano, Veronese, Van Dyck and Velázquez (portrait of a girl). Religious paintings and portraits were well represented, but he also kept paintings of genres of which there is no record to cultivate, such as landscapes, still lifes, vases, and small pictures of mythological subject matter.
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