Very little is known about this artist. Apparently, he was from Cádiz but studied in Seville with Juan de Valdés Leal. Generally known as Clemente de Torres rather than by his complete name, Clemente Fernández de Torres, he invariably added “don” to the front. According to Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, he was born in 1665,[1] but this seems improbable, as his 1727 death certificate states that he was seventy years old at the time of his death. According to one of a series of documents recently published by Duncan Kinkead,[2] Torres rented lodgings at the Plazuela del Arzobispo in Seville on November 19, 1675. This allows us to more accurately determine the dates of his stay in Seville, as well as his relation with other painters from that city, such as Juan Martínez de Gradilla (active 1660-1682), who acted as witness in a 1683 document and with whom he signed a mutual power of attorney that same year. From then until September 1684, he is documented in Seville, where his two brothers (Cosme, a master craftsman of decorative artesonado wooden ceilings, and Salvador, a master surgeon) also lived. There, before 1678, he married María Cristina Pérez de Guzmán, with whom he had a son. He later moved to Cádiz, as he himself states in the dedication of a sonnet to Antonio Palomino that appears at the beginning of the second volume of Museo Pictórico.[3] He spent his final years in Cádiz and died there on July 23, 1727, apparently in a state of abject poverty. He was buried at the convent of San Francisco.[4]
Torres took part in some of the most important painting projects in Seville at that time, including the frescoes at the Dominican Convent of San Pablo, which he shared with his teacher's son, Lucas Valdés. He must also have collaborated with Cornelis Schut III, as the inventory of Nicolás Omazur's paintings mentions a Saint Nicholas “invented by Cornelio Scut [sic] and finished by Don Don [sic] Clemente Fernando de torre [sic].”[5] While we have no documents indicating that he was a disciple of Juan de Valdés Leal, that relation is patent in his style, which also shows the influence of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. This was almost inevitable for all artists painting in Seville during the late 1600s. That influence did not go unnoticed by Ceán Bermúdez, who confessed to owning “some of his pencil-and-wash drawings touched with such grace, spirit and correction that many connoisseurs mistake them for Murillos.”[6]
This drawing reveals Torres's debt to Valdés Leal in the group of cherubs with diverse attributes that mill around the Virgin's feet, which can be compared with the latter's Immaculate Conception, and the figure of Mary, which reflects the Assumption that Valdés Leal painted around 1670–72. Both of the latter's paintings are at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville.[7]
The success of this compositional model among Sevillian painters of Torres's time is illustrated by a very similar drawing at the Courtauld Gallery, which is considered the work of an anonymous artist from Seville or Córdoba from around 1670.[8]

María Cruz de Carlos Varona


1 Ceán Bermúdez 1800, 5:59-60.
2 Kinkead 2006, 162-63.
3 Ca. 1724, signed by Torres as “distinguished professor of the art of Painting and Prize winning student of the Muses in the illustrious city of Cádiz, present in this Court at the time."
4 Sancho de Sopranis 1951, 116. The death certificat defines Torres as a native of Seville.
5 Kinkead 1986, 140.
6 Ceán Bermúdez 1800, 5:59-60.
7 Both are oils on canvas with the same dimensions: 124 x 78 34 in. (315 x 200 cm); inv. CE0191P (Immaculate Conception) and CE0194P (Assumption).
8 Véliz 2011, no. 50. It has traditionally been attributed to Francisco Meneses Osorio (ca. 1640-1721), due to a period inscription.

Details zu diesem Werk