Francisco Pacheco

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Francisco Pacheco (1564-1654) was a Spanish painter, best known as the teacher of Diego Velázquez and Alonso Cano, and for his textbook on painting that is an important source for the study of 17th-century practice in Spain.

He was born at Sanlúcar de Barrameda and moved to Seville at a young age. He was a student of Luis Fernandez, and did much of his learning by copying works of the Italian masters. He visited Madrid and Toledo in 1611, studying the work of El Greco, then returned to Seville and opened an art school.

Pacheco's school emphasized the academically correct representation of religious subjects, not least because he was the official censor of Seville's Inquisition. His own work reflects those constraints; paintings such as the Last Judgment (convent of Santa Isabel) and Martyrs of Granada are monumental in scale but unimaginative in treatment.

Although Velázquez was a student in Pacheco's school for six years, and married Pacheco's daughter Juana in 1618, there is no trace of Pacheco's influence in the work of Velázquez.

In addition to material on iconography and technique, Pacheco's Arte de la pintura includes valuable biographical information on Spanish painters of the time.