Becerra, Gaspar

The son of a modest local painter, he was trained in Italy under the influence of Michelangelo, whom he met while collaborating with Vasari and Daniele de Volterra on important works. In the fifteen-forties, he took part in the decoration of the Palazzo della Cancelleria and one of the chapels at the church of Trinità dei Monti in Rome. After he returned to Spain in 1557, his career advanced as he applied Michelangelo’s models to both painting and sculpture, especially their extravagant musculature and cyclopean size. His gift for sculpture is visible in the main altarpiece at Astorga Cathedral (1558-62). In 1562 he began working for Philip II, painting works in the Alcázar and El Pardo Palace, as well as the Monastery of the Descalzas Reales, between 1562 and 1563. Today, his only surviving frescoes are those from around 1563 that decorate one of the towers of El Pardo Palace with episodes from the story of Danae and Perseus. His style drew directly on Michelangelo’s Sistine period and is an example of Spain’s moment of maximum openness to contemporaneous Italian art in the third quarter of the 16th century.