This is the first comprehensive study of the oeuvre on paper of Vicente Carducho (Florence, c. 1576 – Madrid, 1638), one of the most significant Spanish Golden Age painters, whose work as a draughtsman is complementary to and inseparable from his activities as a treatise writer, theoretician and advocate of painting as a liberal art. A total of 131 drawings attributed to him, together with two dozen sheets from his workshop and a similar number that may have been executed by him, his brother Bartolomé or his immediate followers are thoroughly analysed in this volume, which makes a decisive contribution to current knowledge of the artist’s creative process and his extensive oeuvre. Many of the works – from 30 public institutions and about 10 national and foreign private collections – were previously unpublished or have only now been attributed to Carducho. They trace the various stages in his long career in the service of two kings – Philip III and Philip IV – and various religious orders, from his beginnings at El Escorial to the commissions received in Valladolid, El Pardo and Madrid, which culminated in the large cycle of paintings for the charterhouse of El Paular (1626–32).

Álvaro Pascual Chenel holds a European doctorate in Art History from the University of Bologna and a doctorate in History from the University of Alcalá. He has published many studies on portraiture during the period of Charles II and on seventeenth-century court art – painting, sculpture and drawing. He is particularly interested in the oeuvre of Vicente Carducho, to whom, together with Ángel Rodríguez Rebollo and Isabel García Toraño, he has devoted the exhibition Vicente Carducho. Teoría y práctica del dibujo en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 2015).

Ángel Rodríguez Rebollo holds a degree in Art History from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, where he is currently preparing his doctoral thesis. Since 2002 he has coordinated the “Marqués de Lozoya” Art and Iconography Seminar of the Fundación Universitaria Española, where he is also in charge of art publications. He is the author of the book Las colecciones de pintura de los Duques de Montpensier en Sevilla (2005) and Quadros y otras cosas que tiene Su Majestad Felipe IV en este Alcázar de Madrid. Año de 1636 (2007). He curated the exhibition Semblantes de la Colección Granados (Segovia, 2012) with Gloria Martínez Leiva and with Álvaro Pascual and Isabel García Toraño the above mentioned show of Carducho’s drawings at the Biblioteca Nacional.

The publication of this catalogue raisonné has motivated the exhibition Vicente Carducho. Teoría y práctica del dibujo en el Siglo de Oro at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, organized in collaboration with the CEEH