Alonso Miguel de Tovar

1678 – 1758

Spanish painter. He trained in Seville under Juan Antonio Ossorio and executed numerous religious paintings, including Our Lady of Consolation with SS Francis, James and a Clerical Donor (1720; Seville Cathedral) and St Francis Receiving the Stigmata (c. 1720; Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid). In both of these the influence of Murillo is discernible: the colouring is vivid and the drawing precise, if slightly rigid, and both works show a gentle and uncomplicated piety. Tovar was appointed court painter in 1729, when the Spanish court moved to Seville, and he collaborated with Jean Ranc, probably painting replicas of the latter's portraits. His own portraits include Portrait of a Young Girl (1732; Schloss Elisabethenburg, Meiningen). In 1733 he travelled with the court when it returned to Madrid, and he may have worked as an assistant to Louis-Michel van Loo. Tovar also probably painted the theme of the Holy Shepherd, popular with Sevillian artists of his time. Of the paintings of the subject attributed to him, however, only the one in the church at Cortelazor, near Aracena, signed in 1748, is considered authentic.

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