INGLÉS, Jorge - b. ~1435 ?, d. ~1490 Castile

Painter and illuminator, active in Spain. His name suggests that he was of English origin, and he may have been trained in the Netherlands. His work shows the influence of Rogier van der Weyden and of Netherlandish tapestries and manuscript illumination. He employed a vigorous drawing technique, and his figures are sculptural and expressive, particularly the faces and hands. The sumptuous clothes show that he understood the characteristics of Spanish brocades. The settings are enlarged by an ambitious use of perspective and are filled with carpets, flagstones and canopies; details such as books give a sense of atmosphere, and openings are used to reveal landscape. He was the first painter in Castile known by name to employ the Netherlandish technique of oil on panel. He is regarded as the author of the altarpiece of San Jerónimo de la Mejorada (Provincial Museum, Valladolid), and of a picture in which a saint is shown preaching, now in the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Saint Preaching

Jorge Ingl�s, as his name implies, was an Englishman, or possibly a Fleming, who had settled in Spain. His career is typical of that curious process of assimilation so frequently experienced by the foreign painters who came to Spain and made their home there. The lyrical refinement of his earlier work gradually gives way to an overriding concern for narration and feeling that borders on expressionism.