Fine Arts of Spain. ( 2000-2011 )

From the second half of the fifteenth century, Spain was already a single state; at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this absolutist state reached the highest political and economic power in Europe. The continued conquest of the New World, the opening of new trade routes, turned Spain into the most powerful maritime power, owning giant colonies. Colossal wealth was concentrated in the hands of the landed aristocracy, the court, and the church, which was more powerful in Spain than in any other European state. However, the reactionary domestic and foreign policy of the Spanish kings, ruinous wars, constant religious persecution, and the weakness of the bourgeoisie led Spain to lose its power by the end of the XVI century. The heyday of Spanish culture – literature and theater, consecrated by the names of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, and then painting-did not coincide with the period of the highest economic and political power of Spain and came a little later.

Spanish art was characterized by the existence of traditions not classical, but medieval, Gothic. The role of Moorish art in connection with the centuries-old domination of the Arabs in Spain is undeniable for all Spanish art, which managed to rework the Moorish features in an extremely interesting way, fusing them with the original national ones. The Spanish artists had two main customers: the first was the court, the rich Spanish grandees, the aristocracy, and the second was the church. The role of the Catholic Church in the formation of the Spanish school of painting was very great. Under its influence, the tastes of customers were formed. But the severity of the fate of the Spanish people, the uniqueness of their life paths have developed a specific worldview of the Spaniards. Religious ideas, which, in fact, consecrate all the art of Spain, are perceived very concretely in the images of real reality, the sensual world surprisingly gets along with religious idealism, and the folk, national element breaks into the mystical plot. In Spanish art, the ideal nthe image of the true hero is expressed, first of all, in the images of saints.