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Raimundo
de Madrazo

Son of the influential neoclassical painter José de Madrazo, Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz was born in Rome, where his father was serving King Charles IV in exile. He was baptized in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and sponsored by Prince Frederick of Saxony. He moved with his family to Madrid when his father became chamber painter to Ferdinand VII in 1819. Trained at the Academy of San Fernando, Federico would be named academician of merit in 1831, at the early age of sixteen. At that time he began his premature court career with a propaganda painting commissioned by Queen María Cristina, of special iconographic and symbolic interest, "La enfermedad de Fernando VII" ( Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional), which brought him great fame and recognition from his early youth.
But his definitive formation as a painter, absolutely cosmopolitan, took place between the two great European artistic capitals of his time, following in the footsteps of his father. In 1833 he undertook a trip to Paris, the city where he would settle again between 1837 and 1839. In those years he was in contact with Ingres (1780-1867), and with other successful French painters - to whom he had access through his father -, he participated in the Salons and was commissioned to paint, for the Galerie des Batailles, in the Palace of Versailles, the history painting "Godfrey of Boullon proclaimed king of Jerusalem". He then made other historical paintings, among which "The Great Captain walking the field of the Battle of Ceriñola" (P07806) stands out. In these works he condenses the influence of French academicism with the search for Spanish formal references that would please the artistic taste of the Parisian society of the times of King Louis Philippe I (1773-1850). Shortly before leaving Paris, he had begun work on one of the major compositional paintings of his career, "Las Marías en el Sepulcro" (Seville, Reales Alcázares). With the project of finishing this painting he settled in Rome, the city where he would finish perfecting himself as an artist, incorporating into his style some elements of Nazarene-rooted purism that he was able to meet there, directly, and that would not only affect his plastic art, but also his way of conceiving the artistic training of his future students.
In 1842 Madrazo returned to Madrid, where he soon consolidated his courtly career as a royal portraitist and, helped again by his father's contacts, he reached the position of chamber painter. In 1844 he painted the great portrait of "Queen Isabella II" (Madrid, Academia de San Fernando), with which he definitively established his position as official portraitist of the Crown. In the heat of his undisputed prominence as portraitist of the queen, Federico enjoyed a great demand among the bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Madrid. Thus, he soon coined his own original portrait models, which would have a great diffusion in the artistic market of the central years of the Spanish 19th century. Among the abundant production of those years, the portraits in which he felt freer and less attached to his own models stand out, such as the splendid "Segismundo Moret y Quintana" (P04466), of 1855, or one of his most emblematic paintings, "Amalia de Llano y Dotres, Countess of Vilches" (P02878). In those years he began to mature his most characteristic style, in which the Spanish portraits of the Golden Age acquired a great weight, which would mark the rest of his career.
From the following decade, Madrazo acquired a great predominance in the official artistic panorama, since he was not only director of the Prado Museum -succeeding Juan Antonio de Ribera, his father's rival- but he also governed the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts and played an important role in its school. He also assumed the function of jury in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts and came to occupy a seat as senator of the kingdom, accumulating numerous decorations and international awards, which testify to the impact of his power and the enormous fame he achieved throughout Europe.
Federico de Madrazo was one of the greatest Spanish portraitists of the 19th century. Endowed with an extraordinary ability to idealize his models without detaching himself from reality and with an unsurpassed artistic ability to describe the textures of the clothing and the setting of his portraits, Madrazo managed to coin his own artistic language, of enormous diffusion. Thus, he influenced numerous generations of painters in Spain, since his work as a teacher was very extensive and was supported both by the enormous social weight that he came to monopolize, as well as the extreme quality of his portraits, which was not matched by any of his rivals (G. Navarro, C. in: El siglo XIX en el Prado, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007, p. 477).


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