Juan Carreño de Miranda – Spanish painter of the Baroque period

A nobleman by birth, the artist was born in Avilés in Asturias, at a time when Rus’ was barely beginning to recover from the Time of Troubles, Dmitry Timofeevich Trubetskoy was still alive (whose wife, Anna Vasilievna Vorontsova, owned our Grebnevo near Moscow since 1618) and the Russian-Swedish three-year war began, as a result of which Russia lost access to the Baltic for 100 years. Juan de Miranda understood the internal structure and psychology of the royal court well. In 1669, he was appointed court artist, and in 1671 he became the chief court painter.

The artist’s parents were Juan Carreno de Miranda and Dona Catalina Fernandez Bermudez. His father was the mayor of the artist’s hometown. According to some sources, his mother was a mayor’s maid, which suggests that Juan de Miranda was an illegitimate child. In 1625, at the age of 11, together with his father, who was already widowed by that time, the future artist moved to Madrid. Against his father’s will, Juan entered the workshop of Pedro de las Cuevas in Madrid – about whom art historians know little.
The period of the artist’s views formation is determined by the years 1646-1657. In his early paintings, we see mainly religious motifs, bright and colorful images of angels. After 1657, the artist’s works showed an interest in displaying complex architectural elements, and from 1660, Baroque tendencies were observed in the artist’s work, which accompanied him until the end. Unfortunately, most of the canvases were lost in 1734 during the fire of the Alcázar castle.

According to some sources, the artist married a certain Anna Ivanes before the age of 19. His son, Andrei, was baptized on October 1, 1633, and died on March 19 of the following year. Some researchers believe that these records are inaccurate, and that this is his father’s second marriage. But researchers are confused by the fact that the child’s father is already called “artist”.

In 1658, the name of Juan Carreño appears in the palace reports along with the name of the great Velázquez, who in turn was wary of the growing influence of young artists at court. From 1660, all of the artist’s works commissioned by the Madrid court were strictly documented, which allows us to create an accurate chronology of the artist’s work in the subsequent period of his work. From 1662, the artist’s interest shifted to depicting female images. In 1669, Juan de Miranda was accepted as a court artist and royal portraitist.
From 1671, the work of Juan de Miranda acquired a distinctly official tone.

However, many portraits of the young King Charles II reflect some contrast in the pretentious splendor of the costume and the theatricality of the presentation of the image with the sickly face of the portrait subject. In 1679, the artist turned to the style of a ceremonial portrait in armor. Since 1680, the artist continues to work on palace orders, depicting Queen Maria Louise of Orleans, Eugenia Martinez Vallejo, and the Russian ambassador Potemkin on his canvases. In addition, in the last years of his work, the artist turns to images of freaks and fools.
On October 2, 1685, the artist dictated his last will and died the next day. According to his wishes, he was buried in the monastery of San Gil, which no longer exists today… His wife, Doña Maria, died two years after her husband’s death, on March 3, 1687, and was buried in the same cemetery, which no longer exists.







