TRISTÁN, Luis - b. 1586 Toledo, d. 1624 Toledo - WGA

TRISTÁN, Luis

(b. 1586 Toledo, d. 1624 Toledo)

Spanish painter, active mainly in Toledo. He was born into a family of craftsmen. His father died when he was young, and some years later his mother, Ana de Escamilla, leased an inn in Toledo. He had several brothers, one of whom, Baltasar, was a Dominican friar and another (who called himself ‘de Acevedo’) was a landscape painter whose work is unknown. Around 1603 Tristán entered the workshop of El Greco as an apprentice, where he studied for several years, his name appearing until 1606 as witness in various documents and contracts relating to his master. He was a close friend of El Greco’s son, Jorge Manuel Theotocopoulos.

He is also known to have visited Italy, probably between 1606 and 1613. His style (notably his characteristically elongated proportions) owes much to El Greco, but Tristán is more sober, marking the transition from Mannerism to a more naturalistic approach (The Adoration of the Shepherds, Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, 1620).

Adoration of the Magi (detail)

It is assumed that the figure at the bottom was painted after a model.

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Portrait of Félix Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega (also F�lix Lope de Vega y Carpio, 1562-1635) was a Spanish Baroque playwright and poet. He was born about two years before Marlowe and Shakespeare, but outlived them both. The first Spanish dramatist to make a living as a playwright - and now considered the greatest of all Spanish playwrights - Lope is said to have written over 2,200 plays, over 500 of which have survived.

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St Monica

Luis Trist�n painted important religious paintings, such as Saint Monica on the Yepes altarpiece.

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The Adoration of the Magi

Around 1600 the dominant influence in Toledo was that of El Greco. The link with the master was strongest in the distinguished painter Luis Trist�n, who stressed the Tenebrist aspects of some of El Greco’s work. Trist�n’s development was interrupted by his premature death, but not before he had completed work of such merit as the altarpiece in Yepes (1616) and that of Santa Clara de Toledo which was finished in 1623.

The Adoration of the Magi probably formed part of an altarpiece in the Jeronymite Convent of the Queen in Toledo, together with an Adoration of the Shepherds (now in Cambridge), Pentecost (now in Bucharest) and Resurrection (lost). It has the same composition as the Yepes altarpiece, however, the faces of the figures are different.

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