The Triumph of St Augustine

Claudio Coello is often called the last great Spanish painter of the seventeenth century. His pictures have the full Baroque swing: crowded altarpieces, deep architectural spaces, rich reds and golds, and portraits that stay sober and exact in the Spanish court manner. He was born in Madrid and trained there under Francisco Rizi. Through Juan Carreño de Miranda he got access to the royal collection, where he studied Titian, Rubens and Van Dyck, and those painters show in his colour. He became court painter to King Charles II, whose pale, long face appears in several of his portraits. His great work is the Adoration of the Sacred Host in the sacristy of El Escorial, which took him about seven years and includes more than fifty portraits of the court. In his religious scenes, look at how the setting runs back into depth behind the figures. Coello liked to extend real architecture into painted space.