Alonso Cano in the paintings of his contemporaries and followers: an iconography

Abstract

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Granada school of painting had still not been able to achieve a full and mature baroque naturalist s tyle. Enmeshed in aesthetic debates, under the influence of an anachronistic mannerism, it was only able to produce the very occasional naturalist work. Only after 1652 did a renewal become possible, and this was due to Alonso Cano, a fully mature artist with wide experience who had returned to his home town from the court, to become a canon in the cathedral. The novelty and inventiveness of his art were much admired by contemporaries, and he became, unwittingly, a model for others to follow. For more than a century his work fascinated other painters of greatly diverse styles, personalities and talents.