Antonio de Pereda y Salgado was a Spanish artist.
An artist from the galaxy of masters of the “golden age” of Spanish painting, a still life painter, a representative of the Madrid school, a follower of the principles of Caravaggism.

Antonio Pereda, the son of a little-known Valladolid artist, a native of the hidalgo, was left an orphan at the age of 11 and was taken to Madrid by Andres Careño, a painter and executor of his father. Probably, the future author of “bodegones” took his first steps in the artistic field in the workshop of Pereda Sr. Andres Careño, seeing talent and ability in the boy, sent him to the workshop of Pedro de las Cuevas.

Information about this stage of the artist’s development is rather scarce – it is only known that Francisco de Tejada, a member of the Royal Council, became Pereda’s patron. It was the collection of paintings he had collected that became the subject of study and copying by the young artist. This information, in fact as scarce as that concerning his childhood and youth, was reported by Antonio Palomino in a collection of biographies of Spanish painters, “The Museum of Painting and the Optical Rock.” The same work also provided scant characteristics of the painter’s personality.

First of all, Palomino noted Pereda’s illiteracy, “a quality unworthy of a man of such noble origin.” Subsequently, Pereda fell under the influence of the Italian artist and architect Giovanni (Spanish: Juan) Batista Crecenzi, Marquis de la Torre, who had arrived from Rome to the court of Philip III to carry out decorative work in the Tomb of the Kings in the El Escorial palace-monastery.

Crecenzi was the owner of a large collection of Venetian paintings, as well as works by the Caravaggisti. It was his patronage that had a decisive influence on the formation of Pereda’s style, as well as on the beginning of his career – the Italian architect commissioned him to paint the “Immaculate Conception” for his brother, the cardinal. The experience of this collaboration was successful, and Crecenzi, with the assistance of the all-powerful Count Olivares, in 1634 obtained for Pereda an order for two canvases of the battle genre for the Hall of the Kings of the Buen Retiro Palace.

However, the death of the high patron in 1635 interrupted the court career that was just beginning, and Pereda was forced to return to religious subjects, which met the tastes of his clientele not close to the court.