User:Jbeck21/José de Ibarra

José de Ibarra translation project: enlace a el artículo

make sure hyperlinks link to english equivalent

José de Ibarra (Guadalajara, 1688 - México, November 20, 1756 was a New Spain painter.

Biography
A disciple of mulato painter Juan Correa (1646-1716) in his early years, José de Ibarra is, along with Juan Rodríguez Juárez (1675-1728), one of the most prominent figures in painting from the first half of the 18th century in New Spain, modern day's Mexico. A follower of the artistic renewal promoted by the brothers Juan and Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez, in whose workshop he collaborated, Ibarra cultivated in his work the language of pictorial modernity with strong Italian and French influences, which would be the direct antecedent of the work of Miguel Cabrera (1715-1768), whose fame would eclipse in posterity that which Ibarra himself enjoyed among his contemporaries as a brush artist.

To a large extent the appreciation of his work has been hindered by the critical judgements of the historian Manuel Toussaint, who in his book Colonial Painting in Mexico (published in 1965) pointed to Ibarra and one of those responsible for the supposed "decadence" of Mexican painting in the 18th century promoted by the influence of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo(1617-1682), an opinion based on the similarity that he saw between the paintings of the two painters, and on the fact that Ibarra was glowingly compared to the Sevillian painter by his friend, the poet and historian Cayetano de Cabrera y Quintero. In recent years, however, José de Ibarra's painting has begun to be revalued thanks to the contributions of researchers such as Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, Jaime Cuadriello, Ilona Katzew, Paula Mues and others, who have highlighted the consistency and quality of his entire production, the originality of his contributions to the Novo-Hispanic pictorial tradition and the importance of his contribution to the transformation of the arts that would lead to the founding in Mexico of the Royal Academy of San Carlos of the Noble Arts.

Qualities of his work that stand out include his loose and light brushwork, his faces with character, a refined sense of composition and symmetry, and careful study of anatomy, a spectacular search for tonal contrasts and a gradual reduction of his palette, all accentuated by the attitudes of the characters in his paintings.

Among his abundant production, it is necessary to highlight his portraits of the viceroys Pedro de Cebrián and Agustín, Count of Fuenclara, and Pedro de Castro Figueroa y Salazar, Duke of the Conquest, as well as the Archbishop of Mexico, Juan Antonio Vizarrón y Eguiarreta (National Museum of History, Mexico), examples of Ibarra's mastery in this pictorial genre; likewise, the canvases of the "Relicario de San José", in the old Jesuit college of Tepotzotlán (today the National Museum of Viceroyalty), which represents the Flight to Egypt and The Patronage of San José, and finally his series of paintings for the Cathedral of Puebla, which include the four canvases of the "Adorations" on the outer walls of the choir and those of the Way of the Cross on the pilasters of the temple, the latter attributed for a long time to Miguel Cabrera.