Francisco Barrera

FRANCISCO BARRERA (Madrid, 1595 - 1658).
"Still life.
Oil on canvas.
Piece reinforced on the outer perimeters.
Measurements: 52 x 77 cm.
Francisco Barrera was especially active during the thirties and forties. Although he also made landscapes, decorative and genre painting, he stood out above all in the still life. His painting enjoyed great success; his workshop had many disciples, and he was friends with other still life painters such as Antonio Ponce and Juan de Arellano. He had, however, some problems with the authorities. He was denounced to the Inquisition for making religious works that did not conform to iconography. His still lifes reveal, above all, the influence of Juan de Van der Hamen, the main head of the Madrid school of the first half of the 17th century. However, being somewhat later, Barrera is less severe and geometric: he places the objects in a more intuitive, more random way, he is less meticulous in the description and does not recreate so much in the textures. Neither does he present the courtly tone of Van der Hamen's still lifes, but tends more towards the everyday. Thus, Barrera presents the food in kitchen-like contexts although, from 1626, the supports will no longer be tables but stone plinths like the one we see here, influenced by Sánchez Cotán. Especially famous were his seasonal still lifes like this one, with seasonal foods, which became fashionable at court. Barrera represents a more advanced moment in the Baroque than Van der Hamen and Cotán: he seeks asymmetry in his compositions, naturalism in the arrangement of the elements, and even opens occasionally to landscape. In his style, drawing predominates, and he likes to place elements in foreshortening, coming out of the surface on which they rest and accentuating the sensation of depth, as here the bird located in the lower right corner. Francisco Barrera is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, the National Museum of Slovakia, as well as in other important collections around the world, both public and private.