Abstract

This article analyses the attitude some nineteenth-century Chilean artists and intellectuals had towards works of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age. This study reconstructs the way in which rejection of the artistic and cultural colonial tradition coexisted with admiration for Murillo, Velazquez, Ribera, and Zurbaran. Attention will also be paid to the role works by these Spanish painters played within the Chilean cultural realm as well as their impact on the education of local painters in the second half of the century. The ideas of the intellectual elite, trips to Europe, exhibitions, collecting, and artistic practices in particular will be considered in order to better understand this phenomenon.