The Spanish Wedding

The Spanish Wedding, painted by Mariano Fortuny in 1870, shows the signing of a marriage contract in a church office. At the centre, the bride and groom and the priest hold the attention, surrounded by relatives and friends who watch the act with restrained expressions. Fortuny lavished care on the costumes, the room's decoration and small objects, from the iron grillwork and the peinetas worn by the women to the brazier in the foreground, which probably came from his own collection of antiquities. The clothing mixes eighteenth-century references with late nineteenth-century silhouettes. Its precise, almost jewel-like brushwork, which dissolves into fine dashes when seen from a distance, gives silk and lace a remarkably tactile quality. The contrast between the dark interior and the pale colours of the wedding party recalls seventeenth-century Dutch masters, while the Spanish flavour and the handling of light point to Goya. The picture was a great success across Europe, and its later private ownership helped spread its fame through reproductions.

Painter

Mariano Fortuny Marsal

Date

1870

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

60 × 94 cm

Museum

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Genre

genre art

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