Contemporary with Campaña and De Vargas, the leaders of the Andalusian Mannerists, worked a band of painters of second, or even third-rate, talent. Francisco Frutet, like Campaña a Flemish painter who had learnt his art in Italy, and who came to Seville about 1548, is typical of these “improvers,” as Pacheco calls them so mistakenly, of the native art. His best work is his Triptych in the Museo, in which again we see the same curious mingling of Flemish and Italian types; the Christ, for instance, recalling the models of Italy, while Simon of Cyrene, who bends beneath the Cross, is nearer to the Gothic figures. Pedro Villegas Marmolejo has more interest. His quiet pleasing pictures--one is in the Cathedral, one in San Pedro--interpret Italian art with more charm, but still without originality.
And Marmolejo leads us quite naturally to Juan de las Roelas, and in Roelas we have at last a Spanish painter who learnt from Italy something more than mere technical imitation. And in spite of a want of concentration--the accustomed insincerity, the result, it would seem, of a too persistent effort to express his art in the art of Venice, in which city he is thought to have painted, perhaps in the studio of some follower of Titian, he does realise his scenes with something of the old intensity. Roelas anticipates Murillo, not altogether unworthily, giving us, with less originality, but with much sweetness, an expression of that mood of religious sensuousness that is one phase of Spanish painting. Seville is the single home of Roelas;[A] here we may see his pictures in the Cathedral, in the Museum, and in many of the churches. His art is unequal in its merit. In his large compositions often there is confusion--“Santiago destroying the Moors at the Battle of Clavijo,” his picture in the Cathedral, is one instance--spaces are left uncared for, the composition is a little awkward, the brush-work is careless, a fault that is common to much of his work. The “Martyrdom of St Andrew,” in the Museum, is perhaps his most original picture. Here Roelas is a realist. And how expressive of life--Spanish life, are all the powerfully contrasted figures that so truly take their part in the scene depicted. In some of his pictures Roelas gives us the brightest visions. Such is “El Transito de San Isidore,” in the parish church of the saint, a picture in which we see in the treatment of Christ and Mary and the child-angels a manner that seems, indeed, to forestall Murillo; such, too, are the “Apotheosis of San Hermenegildo,” and the “Descent of the Holy Spirit,” both in the church of the Hospital of La Sangre. All three pictures are difficult to see: one is hidden behind the altar, the other two hang at a great height in the church where the light is dim. There are good pictures by Roelas in the University, a “Holy Child,” the “Adoration of the Kings,” and the “Presentation of the Child Christ in the Temple”; and in this last picture, with its soft colour and human gaiety, again we are reminded of Murillo. But a work of perhaps more interest, certainly of more strength, is “St Peter freed from Prison by the Angel,” which is hidden in a side-chapel in the Church of San Pedro. Then, how quiet, with a repose uncommon enough in Spain, is his “Virgin and Santa Ana,” in the Museo de la Merced. The figures--the girl Virgin, her mother, and the angels who crowd the space above them--all have the fairness Roelas gives to women; the soft glow of their flesh is beautiful. Look at the cat and dog that play so naturally in the foreground, beside a work-basket, and what a happy “note” is given by the open drawer, which shows the linen and lace within. Certainly this picture is more Italian than Spanish.