Paul Pernicharo

Sacrifice of Elijah, 1743, oil on canvas, 143 x 293 cm, Madrid, Parish of San José, chapel of Santa Teresa.

Pablo Pernicharo (?-1760) was a Spanish painter of the 18th century, natural from Zaragoza.

He went to Madrid, where he was a disciple of Michel-Ange Houasse. He obtained a pension from Felipe V to study in Rome where he entered the Academy of Saint Luke. He completed his training there by copying works by Rafael de Urbino and studying the art of antiquity. Back in Madrid he was appointed chamber painter and, when the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando was officially established, in 1752, lieutenant director of painting, passing a year later as director, a job he held until his death, which occurred in Madrid in 1760.

Ceán Bermúdez, from whom the previous biographical information comes, highlighted among his works The death of Abel, a painting painted for the meeting room of the Academy and preserved in it, dated 1754, and Saint Elias and Saint Eliseo at the entrance to the chapel of Santa Teresa in the Carmelite convent of San Hermenegildo, currently the parish of San José in Madrid, where it is kept, although Ceán mistakenly located in the convent of Santa Teresa, also getting the subject wrong, which is the Sacrifice of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, canvas precisely signed «Paulus Pernicharo. Catho Reg. Pic. Faciebat Matriti Ann. 1743». The motif of San Elías y San Eliseo, located in front of it, corresponds to Juan Bautista Peña, with whom Pernicharo also shared the painting of some half-length saints for the chapels of the church of the Imperial College, current Collegiate Church of San Isidro de Madrid. The rest of the works cited by Ceán have been lost, who valued in his painting the correctness of the drawing while accusing a certain heaviness, with which he lost grace in the figures and brilliance in color.

Among his disciples in Madrid, before the establishment of the Academy, Juan Eusebio Estrada from Extremadura is mentioned.