Cabezalero, Juan Martín

He must have been quite young when he arrived in Madrid and became a disciple of Carreño, as he is mentioned as a "master painter" living in Carreño's house in 1666. Among his very few known works are a Saint Jerome signed in 1666 (Meadows Museum, Dallas), four large canvases he made for the Venerable Third Order of Saint Francis between 1667 and 1668, and his collaboration with José Jiménez Donoso at the El Paular Charterhouse. Palomino called him "studious and modest" and echoed the brevity of a life that promised a splendid artistic maturity, as "he died during the best years of his life." We know he was a successful fresco painter, but none of that work has survived. The works attributed to him on the basis of the large canvases for the Third Order allow us to define him as a faithful disciple of Carreño, through whom he must have discovered Van Dyck's composition. That is what led him to make his grandiose and elegant works with monumental and sculptural figures. His loose yet precise touch is visible in works enveloped in a Venetian luminosity, including three at the Museo del Prado: Passage from the Life of Saint Francis, which entered the museum from the Royal Academy of San Fernando; and two different versions of the Assumption of the Virgin, one of which was purchased by Ferndinand VII for the Royal Palace in Aranjuez and the other, which is currently on deposit in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.