Madrid School, ca. 1630. "Portrait of Gaspar de Fuensalidas". Size: 53 x 41 cm; 78 x 67 cm (frame). A faithful friend of Diego Velázquez, with whom, in fact, he maintained a close relationship throughout his life, Gaspar de Fuensalidas is represented in the foreground against a dark background. The artist uses a realistic language and meticulous technique, in keeping with the tradition of the genre. The origins of the Madrid school are linked to the accession to the throne of Philip IV, a monarch who made Madrid an artistic centre for the first time. This was an awakening of the nationalist conscience as it allowed a liberation from the previous Italianate moulds and a leap from the last echoes of Mannerism to Tenebrism. This was the first step taken by the school, which gradually progressed towards a more autochthonous Baroque language linked to the political, religious and cultural conceptions of the Habsburg monarchy, before dying out with the first outbreaks of Rococo in the work of the last of its representatives, A. Palomino. The techniques most commonly used by these painters were oil and fresco. Stylistically, the starting point was naturalism with a notable capacity for synthesis, leading in due course to the allegorical and formal complexity characteristic of the decorative Baroque. These artists showed a great concern for the study of light and colour, as we can see here, initially emphasising the interplay between extreme tones characteristic of tenebrism, which were later replaced by a more exalted and luminous colouring. They received and assimilated Italian, Flemish and Velázquez influences. The clientele determined the fact that the subject matter was reduced almost exclusively to portraits and religious paintings.