HName:  Soria, Martin S[ebastian]

DateBorn:  1911

Placeborn:  Berlin, Germany

Datedied: 1961

Placedied: Brussels, Belgium

HDescrip:  Zurbaran scholar and co-author of the Pelican History of Art volume, Baroque Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500-1800. Soria was the son of Dr. Carlos Soria and Pola Soria. Soria attended Zuoz College, Zuoz Switzerland, before graduating with a B.A. from the University of Madrid in 1933.  He initially chose a career in law, receiving his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree at the University of Zurich in 1935. Soria moved to Harvard University, where he received his M.A. in 1942.  He married Marion Louise Vail (1923-2004).  While completing his Ph.D. at Harvard, Soria  became a United States citizen and taught art as an instructor in the Spanish Department at Princeton University in 1944 (the latter through 1946).  He accepted an appointment at Michigan State University as a visiting lecturer in 1948.  His dissertation, written under Chandler R. Post (q.v.), with Benjamin Rowland, Jr. (q.v.) and Jacob Rosenberg (q.v.) also on his committee, on Francisco de Zurbaran, was accepted in 1949. He was then offered a tenure-track position at MSU as assistant professor and was awarded a Guggenhiem fellowship the following year.  He published an extended version of his dissertation in 1953 as The Paintings of Zurbaran. In 1956, Soria issued a volume on Renaissance painting in Latin America, published by the University of Buenos Aires' Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas.  The same year he was appointed full professor at Michigan State.  The Yale art historian George Kubler (q.v.) contacted Soria to co-author the volume in the Pelican History of Art, which Kubler had convinced the series editor, Nikolaus Pevsner (q.v.), to expand from a volume only on Iberian art.  Kubler wrote the section on architecture and Soria the second half, on painting and sculpture. The volume appeared in 1959.  While en route to the Congress on International Cooperation in Spain, he was killed when the Sabina Airlines jet he was riding in crashed at the Brussels airport.

HCountry:  Spain/United States

HBiography: The Author's and Writer's Who's Who. 6th ed. Darien, CT: Hafner, 1971, p 741; biographical file, Media Communications Department, Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections; [death notice] "Martin Soria." Bulletin of the American Group. International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 1, no. 2 (April 1961): 11; [obituaries:] H[itchcock], H[enry] R[ussell]. "Martin S. Soria." Art Journal 20, no. 3 (Spring 1961):174; Meyer, Charles E. "Martin Soria." Art Quarterly 24 no. 2 (Summer 1961): 195.

HBibliography: [dissertation:] Francisco de Zurbaran: His Life and Works. Ph.D., Harvard, 1949; and Kubler, George.  Baroque Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500-1800. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959; The Paintings of Zurbaran.  London: Phaidon Press, 1953; La pintura del siglo XVI en Sudamérica.  Buenos Aires: Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas, 1956; "Andrea de Leone, a Master of the Bucolic Scene." Art Quarterly 23 no. 1 (Spring 1960): 23-35;  "Painters in Puerto Rico: Paret and Campeche." Art Quarterly 23 no. 3 (Autumn 1960): 228-31; "Goya's Portrait of Miguel de Lardizabal."  Burlington Magazine 102 (April 1960): 161-3.