The French Taste and its Presence in Spain: 17th – 19th Centuries

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Artworks: Vendedor de fruta en Sevilla (Fruit Seller in Seville) (ca. 1864) by Jean-Baptiste Achille Zo and Second Empire Vase
Exhibition: The French Taste and its Presence in Spain: 17th – 19th Centuries
Venue: Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid
Date: 11 February – 8 May, 2022
Curator: Amaya Alzaga


The goal of The French Taste and its Presence in Spain (17th – 19th Centuries), presented by Fundación MAPFRE, is to examine the influence of French art and taste in Spain. The unprecedented breadth and depth of the study gives the exhibition a unique interest and importance.

The show opens in the seventeenth century, when the first artworks started to arrive to Spain from France, then viewed as the model for European taste, and concludes with the reversal of this movement, when Spain became a focal point for French culture due to the interest it aroused among nineteenth-century Romantic painters.

The BBVA Collection contributes to this exhibition with the loan of Vendedor de fruta en Sevilla (Fruit Seller in Seville) by Jean-Baptiste Achille Zo and Second Empire Vase by Louis Valentin Elias Robert, two key works for a proper understanding of the connections between French art and Spanish culture.

The painting by Achille Zo, regarded as one of the most outstanding French artists of Spanish-Orientalist subject matters in the second half of the nineteenth century, illustrates the impact which the discovery of Spanish popular iconography had on the history of France nineteenth-century painting. Painted from sketches he made on his travels throughout Andalusia in 1860, this work is a superb example of a realistic style of portraiture nuanced by
, capturing both the physiognomy of the character but also his personal charisma and individual psychology.

The Second Empire Vase is a representative sample of BBVA’s significant collection of decorative arts. Made by Louis Valentin Elias Robert—a late-1800s sculptor known for his creations for the Paris Opera and the Louvre—it displays all the characteristic features of the so-called Second
(1852-1870), whose lavish ostentation was highly popular among the bourgeoisie of the time.