Vidal, Pedro Antonio

In 1616 he unsuccessfully requested the post of king's painter. The following year, he worked in Madrid's Alcázar palace, where he received payment for a portrait of Philip III -presumably the one now at the Museo del Prado, in which the monarch wears armor. In 1617 he also worked for the convent of San Blas in Lerma (Burgos). The portrait of Philip III wearing armor reveals his debt to the tradition of stiff and severe court portraiture established by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, although Vidal manages to enrich it by precisely defining his model's volume and successfully locating him in the surrounding space. This work was in Madrid's Alcázar palace in 1636 (García López, D. in Enciclopedia M.N.P., 2006, vol. VI, p. 2178).