José Jiménez Donoso (c.1632,

Consuegra Consuegra is a municipality located in the province of Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. In 2018, the municipality had a population of 10,098 inhabitants. It is 80 km from Ciudad Real and 60 km from Toledo. Consuegra is located in La M ...

- 14 September 1690, Madrid) was a Spanish

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

architect and painter. He decorated many of his own buildings, using the Italian technique of quadratura.

Life and work

He learned the rudiments of art from his father, the painter Antonio Jiménez Donoso, and continued his studies in Madrid with Francisco Fernández, who was a follower of

Vicente Carducho Vincenzio Carduccio (in Spanish, sometimes ''Vicencio'' or Vicente Carducho; 1576 or 1578–1638) was an Italian painter who spent his career in Spain. Biography He was born in Florence, and was trained as a painter by his brother ...

. Around 1649, he moved to Rome, where he remained for seven years, learning how to paint

fresco Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...

es. He also studied architecture, apparently coming under the influence of

Francesco Borromini Francesco Borromini (, ), byname of Francesco Castelli (; 25 September 1599 – 2 August 1667), was an Italian architect born in the modern Swiss canton of Ticino

. When he returned to Madrid, he completed his studies at the school operated by Juan Carreño de Miranda. After that, he attempted to obtain a position as court painter to King Charles II, but was unsuccessful. He remained bitter over this failure, although he later became an official painter at Toledo Cathedral. His mastery of Italian techniques also served to provide him with numerous commissions. He was interred in the Iglesia de San Luis, which he had designed. Most of his architectural work has, however, disappeared. Some have been preserved in photographs and drawings, such as portions of Convento de Santo Tomás and the Iglesia de San Luis obispo, which was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. The Casa de la Panadería, which he helped decorate after a fire in 1672, is still standing, despite another fire in 1790. His paintings are mostly frescoes in the Italian style. Prior to his time, most churches were largely painted white, with some geometric designs, Islamic style. He and

Claudio Coello Claudio Coello (2 March 1642 – 20 April 1693) was a Spanish Baroque painter. Coello is considered the last great Spanish painter of the 17th century. The son of Faustino Coello, a famous Portuguese sculptor, he was a court painter for Char ...

were among the first group to do Biblical scenes in the chapels and vaults. Again, much of this was destroyed during the Civil War. Also lost are works done for the private chamber of Queen Marie Louise d’Orléans at the Royal Alcázar. He was one of the artists who participated in decorating the Miracle Chapel at the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales, but it is difficult to pinpoint his contributions to the project. Several altarpieces have survived, as well as three oil paintings, depicting scenes from the life of Saint

Francis of Paola Francis of Paola, O.M., (or: Francesco di Paola or Francis the Fire Handler; 27 March 1416 – 2 April 1507) was an Italian mendicant friar and the founder of the Roman Catholic Order of Minims. Unlike the majority of founders of men's religiou ...

. His only known portrait is of Juan José de Austria, now at the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.

Sources

* A. Rodríguez and G. de Ceballos
Biography
from the ''Gran Enciclopedia Rialp'' * Antonio Palomino, ''El Parnaso español'', Madrid 1724 * George Kubler, ''Arquitectura de los siglos XVII y XVIII'', Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1957 * Fernando Chueca Goitía, ''Madrid y los sitios reales'', Editorial Seix Barral, 1958 * Alfonso E. Pérez-Sánchez, ''Pintura barroca en España 1600-1750'', Ediciones Cátedra, 1992

External links

Biography
@ the

Museo del Prado The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...

Digitalized works
@ the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España
Scholarly articles
in English about José Jiménez Donoso both in web an
PDF
@ th
Spanish Old Masters Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jimenez Donoso, Jose 1630s births 1690 deaths 17th-century Spanish painters 17th-century Spanish architects Fresco painters People from the Province of Toledo