Gregorio Ferro
(Gregorio Ferro Requeijo; Santa María de Lamas, 1744-Madrid, 1812) Spanish painter.He was a chamber painter and general director of the Academia de San Fernando.His style is influenced by Mengs ( Sagrada Familia , The Count of Floridablanca ).
Gregorio Ferro began painting techniques in Santiago de Compostela (La Coruña), under the tutelage of a Benedictine monk.He then moved to Madrid, where he was a disciple of Felipe de Castro, Corrado Giaquinto and Antonio Rafael Mengs, successively.He studied at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and already in the 1760 Academy contest he won third prize, after Ramón Bayeu and Francisco de Goya, who won the first and second respectively.
At the Academy of San Fernando he held the positions of lieutenant director (1788), director (1797) and director general (1804), and he was appointed chamber painter of Carlos IV.Little known but appreciable is his facet as an engraver and illustrator: he illustrated part of the work Viaje de España by Ponz and the edition of Don Quijote de la Mancha published in 1780 by Royal Spanish Academy; Likewise, he engraved the portrait of Miguel de Cervantes for the collection of illustrious men and the medallions in which scenes from the life of Saint Rosendo are represented (engraved by Moreno in 1790).
Detail of San Sebastián (1781), by Gregorio Ferro
Gregorio Ferro's inspiration was mainly religious, and the bulk of his production is limited to this theme.For the Madrilenian church of the nuns of the Sacrament he painted the painting located on the main altar that represents Saint Bernard and Saint Benedict adoring the Blessed Sacrament.Also in Madrid he made the one of the Sagrada Familia for the church of San Francisco el Grande and that of the mystery of the Holy Trinity for the convent of the Incarnation, as well as a Portrait of Fray Sebastián de Jesús Sillero and a copy of the Christ of Diego Velázquez, which is kept in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
For the parish church of Aranjuez (Madrid), Ferro painted a Crucifixion of Jesus; for Toledo and Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), two paintings showing the appearance of the bodies of Saints Justo and Pastor; for the monastery of Celanova (Orense), a series of canvases on the life of San Rosendo; and for the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, those of Santiago and the Annunciation.He also related the story of the prodigal son in a cycle of eight paintings destined for American temples, and he designed the group and the medallion on the facade of the municipal palace of Santiago de Compostela that José Gambino and José Ferreiro sculpted.
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