a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes—also called bodegones—were painted in an austere style, especially when compared to similar works in the Netherlands and Italy. Cotán was a prolific religious painter whose work, carried out exclusively for his monastery, reached its peak about 1617 in the cycle of eight great narrative paintings that he painted for the cloister of the Granada Monastery. These depict the foundation of the order of St. Bruno, and the prosecution of the monks in England by the Protestants.
