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Juan Bautista Maíno is one of the most important Spanish painters of the first half of the 17th century,
but paradoxically one of the least familiar to the general public.
The last few years have seen a growing interest in his work on the part of specialists
of both Spanish painting and European Caravaggesque painting,
and a various works by Maíno have been included in exhibitions on European Caravaggesque painting.
A monographic exhibition on the artist has not, however, been organised to date nor have any comprehensive and systematic studies on his life and work been published.
Maíno’s output is small and his accepted oeuvre now stands at around 35 works.
The present exhibition also aims to include a number of additional paintings that have emerged as the result of new research in the past few years
and the organisers consider that in the future more works will be added to the known group as a result of recent investigations and increasing knowledge and promotion of his figure.
It may be that Maíno has not yet been sufficiently studied and many works previously attributed to other artists,
including northern and Roman Caravaggesque painters and Spanish painters, can now be considered as works by his hand.
In 1613 Maíno took holy orders in the Dominican monastery of San Pedro Mártir
where he painted his greatest work and from that moment on his principal social status was that of a member of a religious order rather than an artist.
While it has always been thought that he painted very little from that date onwards,
this is now known to be not exactly the case
and the aim of the present exhibition is partly to look in greater detail at Maíno’s life,
to draw the general public’s attention to his artistic personality and to allow experts to see all his most important works together in one place.
In addition, the inclusion of works by Roman artists working between 1600 and 1610
and Spanish painters of the first half of the 17th century
will enable Maíno’s work to be set within a European and a specifically Spanish context.
The result is to allow the visitor to see almost all of Maíno’s key paintings
as well as works by Caravaggio, Reni, Saraceni, and Cecco da Caravaggio as well as others by El Greco, Velázquez, Tristán, Orrente, and Lanchares.
In other words, this exhibition allows Maíno to be seen in both a national and an international context.
The research on Maíno undertaken at the Museo del Prado over the past few years – in particular by the Museum’s restoration studio and technical cabinet –
has given us a better idea of the artist’s pictorial technique, which is notably close to that of the Caravaggesque painters in Rome mentioned earlier.
In addition, we have undertaken extensive archival research,
revising all the documents that have appeared and been published over the last hundred years,
while we have also discovered significant new documentary information
that allows for a much more precise and reliable account of his early years.
Maíno was born in Pastrana in 1581,
son of a Milanese silk merchant and of a Portuguese woman whose family were Jewish converts.
Maíno’s parents settled in Pastrana, a ducal town that belonged to the princes of Eboli
and which enjoyed a particularly flourishing period between around 1575 and 1630.
Maíno was born there along with various other brothers and sisters.
In 1592 some members of the family moved to Madrid
where Maíno may have received an initial artistic training and first became acquainted with the world of painting.
He absorbed the richly chromatic style with its pronounced chiaroscuro that was created at this date
by Caravaggio and the Bolognese classicising painters who settled in Rome around 1600.
The result was a dazzling oeuvre, as can be seen in the present exhibition as well as in the works by Maíno’s hand on permanent display in the Museo del Prado.