Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Medina, John Baptist
MEDINA, Sir JOHN BAPTIST (1659–1710), portrait-painter, born at Brussels in 1659, was son of Medina de Caustanais, a Spanish officer of good family, who married at Brussels and settled there. Medina studied painting at Brussels under François Du Chatel. He married when young at Brussels Joanna Maria Van Dael. He came to England in 1686, and practised for two years as a portrait-painter in London, but finding a munificent patron in the fifth Earl of Leven, he was induced by that nobleman to go to Scotland, where a subscription of 500l. was collected in order to enable him to practise at Edinburgh. According to Vertue (Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 23068, f. 35), Medina went with his large family to Scotland, taking with him ‘many postures for heads, the draperys painted—only to put the faces to them, cover'd them over with water-colours.’ By this means Medina got through a surprising amount of work in a very short time, and the number of portraits for which he received commissions in Scotland fully entitled him to be known as ‘the Kneller of the North.’ For the Earl of Leven he painted twenty portraits, including three of his patron. He executed a number of portraits of fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons at Edinburgh, which still remain in Surgeons' Hall there. Many families in Scotland possess portraits by him, among these being a large picture of the Marquis of Argyll and his two sons, and another of George, first duke of Gordon, with his son and daughter. Medina was knighted in 1707 by the Duke of Queensberry, the lord high commissioner in Scotland, and was the last knight made in Scotland before the Act of Union. Medina, when visiting England, drew the illustrations for the edition of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost,’ published by Jonson in 1705. He also drew a series of illustrations for Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses.’ According to Vertue (loc. cit. f. 28) Medina had an ‘exact design, a clever pencil, and good colouring, he drew and painted historical subjects very well, and had a fine taste in landskip, and would have made a good history painter had he lived where suitable encouragement was to be had.’ The excellence of some of Medina's portraits is much disguised by the stiffness of his postures. Medina died at Edinburgh on 5 Oct. 1710, and was buried on the north side of Grey Friars churchyard there. His widow survived him, with two sons and four daughters. A portrait of himself is at Florence, presented by the Duke of Gordon, and another, painted in 1708, is in Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh (engraved in Pinkerton's ‘Scottish Gallery’). Two portraits drawn by him of the Earl of Carnwath and Grinling Gibbons, the sculptor, are in the print room at the British Museum. A picture of two of his children by him is in the collection of the Earl of Wemyss.
His son, John Medina (d. 1764), also practised as a portrait-painter, and died in Edinburgh on 1 Dec. 1764. The latter's son, John Medina (1721–1796), also followed the same profession. He restored the pictures at Holyrood Palace, and made several copies of the ‘Ailsa’ portrait of Mary Queen of Scots. He resided in London for a short time, and exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy in 1772 and 1773. He died at Edinburgh on 27 Sept. 1796, in his seventy-sixth year.
[Stirling Maxwell's Annals of the Artists of Spain; Walpole's Anecd. of Painting; Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 23068 and 23072; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; information from J. M. Gray, esq.]