The Neoclassical Elegance of José del Castillo In the luminous era of the Enlightenment, few artists captured the transition from decorative grace to intellectual clarity as masterfully as José del Castillo. Born in Madrid on October 14, 1737, Castillo emerged from a world where the flamboyant flourishes of the Rococo were beginning to yield to the disciplined rigor of Neoclassicism. His early life was marked by an extraordinary precocity; at just ten years old, he was already serving as an assistant in the preparatory drawing classes at the prestigious Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San F…