Alejandro González Velázquez (27 February 1719 – 1772), was a Spanish late-

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

architect and painter. Velázquez was born in

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

into a family of artists; his father Pablo González Velázquez and brothers

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

and

Antonio Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan language, Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language–speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top ...

were all painters. He studied painting at the School Board for the establishment of the

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the centre of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal aca ...

, and trained at the Italian technique

quadratura Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective di sotto in sù and quadratura, is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which ''trompe-l'œil'', perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other ...

. In collaboration with his brother Luis he painted wall decorations of numerous churches in Madrid, including the chapel of Santa Teresa in the Convent of San Hermenegildo, the parish of San José, and the church of the Bernardine nunnery of Sacramento. In 1652, he was officially named deputy director of architecture for the Academy. The following year, returning Antonio from Italy, the three brothers were responsible for the frescoes of the dome and

pendentive In architecture, a pendentive is a constructional device permitting the placing of a circular dome over a square room or of an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. The pendentives, which are triangular segments of a sphere, taper to point ...

s of the Convent of the Salesians Royals led by

Corrado Giaquinto Corrado Giaquinto (8 February 1703 – 18 April 1766) was an Italian Rococo painter. Early training and move to Rome He was born in Molfetta. As a boy he apprenticed with a modest local painter Saverio Porta, (c. 1667–1725), escaping the r ...

. Specializing in ornamental painting in 1766 he was appointed director of the new section of Perspective at the Academy. As an architect, Velázquez provided the plans for the redevelopment of the Church of Bernardine nunnery Vallecas, taking charge himself from the traces of its altarpieces, and also traces of the altarpiece of the church of Alpajés in Aranjuez, where he collaborated again with Santiago Bonavía, and the Justinian nuns of Cuenca, where he also was responsible for the overall plans of the temple and the painting of their vaults. Among his disciples was his son José Antonio, the first director of architecture at the

Academy of San Carlos An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the ...

in Mexico.

External links and references

* Cean Bermudez, John Augustine, Historical Dictionary of the most distinguished teachers of the Fine Arts in Spain, Madrid, 1800, vol. 2, p. 218. * Pastor Gutierrez, Ismael, "Portrait of Luis Gonzalez Velazquez ', Yearbook of the Department of History and Theory of Art, No. 1, 1989, p. 139-146. 1719 births 1772 deaths 18th-century Spanish painters 18th-century Spanish male artists Spanish male painters Painters from Madrid Spanish Baroque painters {{Spain-painter-stub