VÁZQUEZ, Antonio - b. ~1483 Valladolid, d. ~1563 Valladolid

Spanish painter. He was one of the most important artists working in Valladolid in the first half of the 16th century, producing works which may still be found today in their original locations in and around the city, such as the Alderetes altarpiece in the church of Salvador, Simancas, dated 1536, or the altarpiece in the church of Santa María la Sagrada, Tordehumos.

Vázquez was a prolific painter, with a sizeable and active workshop, whose style combined elements from other Castilian painters such as Pedro Berruguete, Juan de Borgona and Juan Correa da Vivar (c. 1510-1566). Accused in later scholarship as displaying backward artistic tendencies, it seems that it was precisely his deliberately archaic, meticulous style and the decorative use of gold, perpetuating the 15th-century Gothic tradition, which won him commissions throughout the city. Indeed, one of the most remarkable characteristics of his oeuvre is the lack of stylistic development and the repetition of subjects and motifs - an absence of artistic evolution which must in part be attributable to the tastes and demands of Vázquez’s patrons.