Pedro Berruguete

Pedro Berruguete was a Spanish painter whose art is regarded as a transitional style between Gothic and Renaissance art. Berruguete most famously created paintings of the first few years of the Inquisition and of religious imagery for Castilian retablos. He is considered by some as the first Renaissance painter in Spain.

He was the father of Alonso Berruguete, considered the most important sculptor of the Spanish Renaissance. Because of the fame accrued by Alonso, Pedro Berruguete is sometimes referred to as Berruguete el Viejo ("Berruguete the Elder") to differentiate between the two.

It is speculated that Pedro travelled to Italy in 1480 and worked in the court of Federico III da Montefeltro in Urbino, where he could have seen some works by Melozzo da Forlì. The Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro with His Son Guidobaldo (c. 1475), now at the Galleria nazionale delle Marche, has been attributed to Berruguete by some art historians but the Flemish painter Justus van Gent, who was working in Urbino at the time, is another strong candidate for its authorship.

Berruguete returned to Spain in 1482 and painted in several cities, including Toledo and Ávila. His exact date of death is unknown and often approximated around 1503-1504. He may have died in Madrid, but no verifiable documentation has been found to substantiate this claim.

Born in Paredes de Nava, Kingdom of Castille, c. 1450, his exact year of birth is unknown. His family was from Paredes de Nava and he received his namesake from his grandfather. Though the last 15 years of his life seem to be better documented, a lack of documentation of his early life and works leaves much about his biography and education up to speculation. The lack of a signature and documents make it difficult to assuredly attribute paintings to the artist, but many paintings have been attributed to him based on his unique style and a few have been identified through documentation. This makes it hard to precisely date many paintings as well as to create a correct chronology. However, the last 15 years of his life seem to be better documented.

He married Elvira González in Paredes de Nava at a later age and had 6 children with her, including Alonso Berruguete, the famous sculptor.

Because of a large amount of his paintings residing in Ávila, it is thought that Berruguete might have established a studio there in the 1490s.

In 2003, to commemorate the fifth centenary of the painter's death, he was the subject of an exhibition in his hometown, Paredes de Nava, which brought together the best of his paintings and clarified some aspects of his life and work. The exhibition also served to stylistically compare his works from Paredes de Nava with works attributed to him from Urbino.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023