Esteban March Baroque Battle and Portrait Painter

Abstract

In seventeenth-century Spain the most flourishing center of painting next to Seville and Madrid was the city of Valencia.1 Baroque painting in Valencia has not yet received the attention it deserves. Ribera, who came from nearby Játiva, is, of course, well known as an important exponent of the Caravaggiesque style. Mrs. Delphine Fitz Darby has written a study on Francisco Ribalta and his less inspired followers.2 Standing on the threshold between Mannerism and Baroque, Ribalta is important chiefly because he was in all likelihood the teacher of Ribera. Only about half a dozen significant works in the new style from Ribalta's hand remain. They were done in Valencia between 1610 and 1628, when other painters elsewhere in Spain were also eagerly exploring the possibilities of the new Baroque mystic realism. As important as Ribalta is Pedro Orrente, on whom we still lack a monograph. Born in Murcia and trained in El Greco's Toledo, Orrente is of especial interest because of the influence he was to exert on the Valencian painters active during the classic phase of the Baroque around the middle of the seventeenth century. Two outstanding artists painted in Valencia after Orrente's death in 1645: Jerónimo Jacinto Espinosa (1600–67),3 whose art is indebted primarily to Zurbarán,4 and Orrente's pupil Esteban March.5