Saints, artists, queens, nobles, heroines or workers, … today we want to dedicate this article to the women of Seville who have endured in our memory. For their art, for what they financed, for having become icons of the city of Seville or for having starred in local legends. They led a difficult life, suffered cruelty and adversity, yet overcame obstacles.

Chronologically from the oldest to the most recent, this is a small selection of sevillians that deserve to be honored. Not all existed, or if, although sometimes the popular memory has fabled over them. Today, remembering these eight women, we can say that they are alive again.

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Justa and Rufina

Saints. 4th century. They are considered co-patrons of Seville. They lived in Roman times. They were from Triana and were pottery makers, working the clay. Converted to the new Christian religion, they suffered persecution and died for it, and they were then canonized. Sometimes they are represented accompanied by a lion, since they were condemned to die devoured by one.

A second episode shows them in the 16th century. Due to a great earthquake the Sevillians asked for the intercession of their local saints and it was possible to see how Justa and Rufina came down from the heaven to hold the emblem of the city, the famous Giralda tower. Thanks to them, the tower did not fall and 500 years later it still stands. They therefore carry the tower of the Cathedral of Seville as an identifying element.

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Itimad

Muslim queen. 11th century. The Muslim era lasted 5 centuries. One of the brightest periods for Seville was the Taifa period (11th century) and its most famous king was Al-Mutamid, also called the poet king. Al-Mutamid of great sensitivity created a court full of artists, musicians and poets in the Alcazar of Seville. He fell in love with a slave from Granada whom he brought to live with him and became queen, Queen Itimad. Itimad loved him but she missed Granada and the snow that covered the Sierra Nevada mountains every winter. In a romantic outburst, the king ordered the Alcazar garden to be planted with almond trees, so that flowered at the end of winter, they resemble the snow that his beloved remembered from Granada. They were happy until the Almoravids conquered Seville and Al-Mutamid had to flee to Marrakech where he died.

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Doña Maria de Padilla

King’s favorite. 14th century. King Pedro I of Castile nicknamed the Cruel had innumerable lovers, but his favorite was Doña Maria de Padilla. Tragic history and above all brief. The king was married to Blanche of France and intended to annul his marriage in order to marry Maria de Padilla with whom he had had a son. The king’s life passed between wars and betrayals. He was murdered at age 35 by his half-brother Enrique de Trastámara who ascended the throne. Doña Maria could not become queen nor her son heir. If it is a consolation to you today, both Pedro and Maria de Padilla are buried together in the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville. What could not be in life would be for eternity

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Doña María Coronel

Noble and religious. 14th century. She could have been a champion of the # Me too movement. It was one more conquest of King Pedro I of Castilla. But in this case she refused to satisfy his wishes. The king did not stop harassing her and persecuted her throughout the city. Doña Maria Coronel in full flight took refuge in the convent of Santa Clara. There when the king was about to catch her, she entered the kitchen and spilled a cauldron of boiling oil on her face, totally disfiguring herself.

The king lost interest and it seems that repentant for his harassing action, he gave him money and land to found a convent. This would be that of Santa Ines, of Poor Clares nuns. Surprisingly when Doña Maria Coronel died, her body was incorrupt, even today, 700 years later, and can be visited in her convent every December 2. The aggressor king Pedro no longer likes us as well as in the previous story.

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Catalina de Ribera

Noble and founder. 16th century. This woman who lived in the Renaissance time was born noble and wealthy, but she used her fortune to improve the city in which she lived. She is the builder of the Casa de Pilatos and the Palacio de Dueñas. But above all, its great legacy is one of the largest hospitals in Europe in the 16th century, the Hospital of the Five Wounds or Blood.

It was not the only one in the city but it was the largest and most modern. Especially necessary in a time of great plagues and epidemics. It was also intended for poor women and men, the most disadvantaged in society. It was built in the Macarena neighborhood and today it is the seat of the Andalusian Parliament.

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Luisa la Roldana

Sculptress. 17th century. She was the daughter of a great artist, also a sculptor Pedro Roldán. This favored that she could follow the profession of her father whom she equaled and they say that she even exceeded. She fought all her life and defended her trade. She worked for churches, convents and noble families. She was the first female sculptor of the court, that is, an official sculptor in Madrid de los Austrias.

However, she did not get rich and could not even lead a decent life. In fact, she died in poverty in a time of crisis that did not value the profession of artists very much either.

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Carmen

Cigar maker and opera protagonist. 19th century. Carmen is a fictional character, she rose to fame as the protagonist of a well-known French opera that recounts the vicissitudes of a worker at the Tobacco Factory in Seville in the 19th century. The story is by the French Prosper Merimée and the music by the also French Georges Bizet. It is a foreign and romantic vision of Andalusia from 150 years ago. The society that portrayed brave bullfighters, smugglers and passionate gypsies was not 100% real, but history has transcended and has helped export the image of Andalusia outside our borders.

At the top of the lateral façade of the Palace of San Telmo there are a series of statues of outstanding men: Murillo, Bartolomé de las Casas, Martinez Montañés, Daoiz and some more … without a doubt they deserve it. But these eight women would also have the right to be part of an illustrious selection of Sevillian women.

The nickname “painter of painters” was given by the French artist Eduard Manet, who deeply admired his work. Manet had the opportunity to contemplate his paintings in the Prado Museum, which houses the most important part of his pictorial career. However, Velázquez was born about 500 km from the court, in southern Spain, in Seville. He never forgot his origins and he signed as “pictor hispalensis”, that is, Sevillian painter.

He was born as Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez, but he is known worldwide by his second surname, Velazquez, according to Andalusian tradition from Portugal.

He was the eldest son of a Sevillian family of modest fortune and, given his drawing skills, his parents sent him to train as an apprentice at the Seville painter Francisco de Herrera’s “el Viejo”workshop.

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Painters workshops and academies

The bad character of this artist made the young Velázquez at the age of 11 change to another workshop also from Seville that would mark him for life, professional and personal. His new teacher was Francisco Pacheco, painter, polychromator, writer and intellectual of great reputation in Seville in the early seventeenth century.

Seville at the beginning of the century was still a great metropolis although it was beginning to be punished by the economic crisis. Culturally it was known as the New Rome and literary and artistic gatherings were frequent, one of the most popular was that of the Casa de Pilatos, residence of the Duke of Alcala, in which the Master Pacheco actively participated and perhaps Velázquez himself. There they talked about painting, poetry, history and mythology … themes that gave our young painter a great culture.

Herrera was Velazquez’s teacher until he became a professional painter after passing the exam that allowed him to open his own workshop. In addition, Velázquez would marry in 1618 with the daughter of his teacher, Juana.

To be a painter they usually started at 10 or 11 years as apprentices in a teacher’s workshop, where they trained. This system came from medieval times and was strongly linked to guilds and artisan work. Then they had to pass a master’s exam, it was then when they acquired the degree of painter and they could already start their own professional career with the right to practice throughout the kingdom.

A few years later a group of Sevillian painters: Murillo, Herrera el Joven and Valdes Leal founded a drawing and painting academy in the Casa Lonja (current Archive of the Indies) to change the guild system of learning in workshops, there they innovated using people as models. With this they intended to renew the arts and the training of painters.

But above all they intended to give a greater intellectual category to the profession of painter, until now considered as one more crafts without qualification. That was also the objective of Velazquez from another area, the Madrid court, where he worked. Always a proud painter of his art, he fought for the social and noble merit of the Cross of the Order of Saint James, to get away from the idea of the artisan painter of the Middle Ages and be part of the intellectual and noble elite of the Spanish society.

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What are famous works by Velázquez in the sevillian period

Until the age of 24, Velazquez was living and working in his hometown, so we have a good number of pictures from this period, although unfortunately few of them are preserved in Seville.

Velazquez’s painting from Seville’s period is characterized by the naturalism, color and strong influence of drawing, following in the wake of Andalusian painting from the beginning of the 17th century. He mainly painted portraits, religious subjects and genre or everyday life painting.

Among the best works of the Seville period are:

• The Old woman frying eggs. 1618. Currently in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. A still life scene and portraits of humble people of his time, highly influenced by chiaroscuro, fashionable in those years.
• Adoration of the Magi. 1619. In the Prado Museum, Madrid. It is a religious theme and it has been interpreted that the models were the relatives to the painter. Francisco Pacheco, teacher and father-in-law of Velazquez would be the king Melichior, the one with the white beard. The Virgin Mary would be Velazquez’s wife, Juana Pacheco, whom he had married a year earlier, the Child Jesus would be the painter’s own eldest daughter, and Diego Velazquez would give King Caspar a face.
• The Waterseller of Seville. 1618. at the Wellington Museum, London. A great example of the imitation of nature that young painters were chasing in the 17th century. It is the portrait of “a water carrier”, a common occupation in Seville. It is also symbolically related to the three ages of man: youth, maturity and old age.

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Where you can see Velázquez paintings in Seville: The hospital of venerables

In the heart of the Santa Cruz Quarter is the Hospital de los Venerables, which was a haven for elderly priests in the 17th century. Restored a few years ago, it belongs to the Focus Abengoa Foundation and houses the Velazquez Center.

This small but important collection of Sevillian baroque painting includes some of Velazquez’s paintings that are preserved in Seville, all of them from his early years.

• Portrait of Santa Rufina. It inaugurated the collection and represents one of the Holy Patronesses of Seville as a girl. If there was a “Santa Justa”, since they usually go as a couple, it has not been preserved. It includes the symbols that represent her: the palm of martyrdom and the ceramic pots that refer to her pottery trade.
• Imposition of the chasuble to San Ildefonso, property of the Seville City Council, today in the Velázquez Center.
• Immaculate Conception. A religious theme that would be very successful, especially in Seville from that time on, and a field in which our young painter also experimented.

In addition, in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville we can see two other Velazquez: the Portrait of Canon Cristobal Suárez de Ribera and in small format a Head of Apostle.

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Why there are not many paingtings of Velázquez in Seville

Either because they were sold to private individuals at the time or due to the French invasion of the early 19th century that involved a plunder of works of art in Seville, or because of the closure of convents and religious orders that owned works by Velazquez, the result is that today few of these works are in the place where they were made.

Velazquez’s Sevillian period did not last long, about five years, since in 1622 the king’s painter’s place in Madrid became vacant and through the mediation of the also Sevillian, Gaspar de Guzman, Count Duke of Olivares, Diego Velázquez left his hometown to go to the capital of the kingdom.

The gap that Velazquez left in Seville when he left in 1623 was occupied by other distinguished painters such as Zurbaran, Murillo and Valdes Leal. But that is another story…