Francisco Pradilla Ortiz

Francisco Pradilla was one of the great Spanish history painters of the nineteenth century. His large canvases turn scenes from Spanish history into grand, detailed dramas, with carefully researched costumes and settings.

He was born near Zaragoza, studied there and in Madrid at the Real Academia de San Fernando, and in 1873 won a place at the Spanish Academy in Rome, which he later directed. His Doña Juana la Loca (1877), showing Joan the Mad beside her husband’s coffin on a bleak winter plain, made him famous and hangs in the Prado. He followed it with The Surrender of Granada, and later painted the Baptism of Prince Juan. He also produced many smaller genre scenes and landscapes.

Look for the mood in his settings: wind, grey skies and open ground that match the story.