Pedro Berruguete was a Spanish painter; his art is regarded as a transitional style in Spain between gothic and Renaissance. Berruguete most famously created paintings of the first few years of the Inquisition and of religious imagery for Castilian retablos. He is considered by some as the first Renaissance painter in Spain. He was the father of an important sculptor, Alonso Berruguete, considered the most important sculptor in Renaissance Spain. Because of the fame accrued by Alonso, Pedro Berruguete is sometimes referred to as Berruguete el Viejo (or Berruguete the Older) to differentiate between the two.
It is speculated that he travelled to Italy in 1480 and worked in Federico III da Montefeltro's court in Urbino, where he could have seen some works by Melozzo da Forlì. The Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro with His Son Guidobaldo (c. 1475), now at the Galleria nazionale delle Marche, has been attributed to him by some art historians but the Flemish painter Justus van Gent working in Urbino at that time is another strong candidate for the authorship of this work.
He returned to Spain in 1482 and painted in several cities, such as Toledo and Ávila. His exact date of death is unknown and often approximated around the years 1503-04, but it is also speculated that he might have died in Madrid, though no real documentation has been found for this claim.
Born in Paredes de Nava, Kingdom of Castille, circa 1450, his exact year of birth is unknown. His family was from Paredes de Nava and he received his namesake from his grandfather. Though the last 15 years of his life seem to be better documented, a lack of documentation of his early life and works leaves much about his biography and education up to speculation. The lack of a signature and documents make it difficult to assuredly attribute paintings to the artist, but many paintings have been attributed to him based on his unique style and a few have been identified through documentation. This makes it hard to precisely date many paintings as well as to create a correct chronology. However, the last 15 years of his life seem to be better documented.
He married Elvira González in Paredes de Nava at a later age and had 6 children with her, including Alonso Berruguete, the famous sculptor.
Because of a large amount of his paintings residing in Ávila, it is thought that Berruguete might have established a studio there in the 1490s.
In 2003, to commemorate the fifth centenary of the painter's death, he was the subject of an exhibition in his hometown, Paredes de Nava, which brought together the best of his paintings and clarified some aspects of his life and work. The exhibition also served to stylistically compare his works from Paredes de Nava with works attributed to him from Urbino.
There seems to be a lack of documentation of Berruguete living in Spain during the years of 1471 to 1483. In 1604, a Sevillian artist named Pablo Céspedes wrote about a Spanish painter who had painted a series of famous men for the studiolo of the Duke of Urbino. A ‘Petrus spagnuolus’ or ‘Pietro spagnolo’, which would translate to Pedro the Spaniard, is documented as painting in the court of Federico Montefeltro in 1477 where he would have collaborated and interacted with a man known as the Justus of Ghent. Scholars lean towards the idea that the style of a ‘Petrus spagnuolus’ working for Federico Montefeltro during this period directly correlates to the style of Pedro Berruguete in his later paintings and have attributed some of these paintings to him as well as the Justus of Ghent.
Additionally, it is believed that he returned to Spain after his stay in Italy and brought the influence of Italian Renaissance painting back to his country and it impacted his work in Castile. There is no direct documentation of Berruguete making a trip to Italy or residing there. A major difference in the work of Petrus spagnuolus is that the paintings in Italy were executed in oil while Pedro Berruguete’s are completed in tempera grassa.
Painting almost exclusively religious images, Pedro Berruguete’s artwork is identifiable by the unique facial features of both his male and female figures, the amount of brocateado and gilding he uses on garments and backgrounds, his use of color and his architectural framing devices.
His Male figures tend to have characteristically large hands with detailed wrinkles and focused gazes. His women figures are usually depicted in interior scenes and tend to have heavy eyelids and round cheeks.
The architecture incorporated into both his interior scenes shows influence from Gothic architecture as well as Mudéjar artistic and architectural influence that he would have seen in Spain. Architectural spaces are found in almost all of his paintings, excluding bust portraits of holy or biblical figures.
Berruguete’s heavy use of gilding and brocade for nimbuses, garments, backgrounds and architecture is also a defining element of his artwork as it is present in almost all of his pieces. He uses gilding to highlight the halos of holy figures and often uses it in a brocaded design on the garments of important figures or as a tapestry-like background for important figures.

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