CARREO DE MIRANDA, JUAN

born March 25, 1614, Avils, Asturias, Spain died September 1685, Madrid painter, considered the most important Spanish court painter of the Baroque period after Velzquez. Influenced and overshadowed both by Velzquez and Van Dyck, he was nonetheless a highly original and sensitive artist in his own right. Carreo studied painting under Pedro de las Cavas and Bartolom Romn. He assisted Velzquez in the decoration of the Alczar in Madrid and the other royal palaces and was appointed painter to King Charles II in 1669 and court painter in 1671. Although he is known primarily as a portraitist, he also painted many religious works in oil and fresco that reveal a unique Baroque sensibility. Such works as his masterpiece, Founding of the Trinitarian Order (1666; Courson Castle, near Arpajn), are marked by mastery of execution, subtle interplay of light and shadow, and inventiveness of scene. Following the tradition of Velzquez' court portraits, he painted many pictures of the queen mother, Mariana of Austria, and traced in oil the decline of Charles II from a handsome child to a decrepit old man. Even the most repellent portraits of Charles possess the aristocratic elegance that characterize Carreo's paintings.