Rather than tell a story (because the Prado didn’t lend itself to that), this post is simply a collection of things that caught my eye as I wandered through one of the world’s great galleries.
With the Madrid heat becoming relentless again, I decided to retreat into another gloriously air-conditioned building: the Prado Museum. A palace of portraiture and painting.
To get in, you must go through scans at the same kind of level as airport security. Shoulder bags have to be put into a cloakroom. The worst thing is no photography is allowed. All these places I’ve been with “don’t touch”, and now no photos.
I guess if you’re really interested in a piece, you’ll make a note of it and research it later. I imagine that for most pieces there will be something on the internet to remind you. Therefore, none of the images in this post are actually mine. And I ramble on with random thoughts sketched while I wandered the marble halls of the gallery.
The Judgement of Paris, Francesco Albani – to me the three women seem to be identical! I wondered if it was because I’m an androsexual eunuch and simply not attracted to women, or whether the artist was illustrating that Paris actually had an impossible choice. It was actually because there were rigid rules as to what constituted beauty in the time the portrait was created – and he prickly used the same model for all the goddesses! In the myth, Paris went with what he thought of as the best bribe!
Caravaggio – David with the head of Goliath – David is depicted as a young white boy. All other paintings in the rooms depict characters from the bible (new and old testament) as pasty white people. Even Joseph of technicolour dream coat fame (Antonio del Castillo – Joseph orders Simeon’s imprisonment). The portrayal of David as a child rather than as a mound of muscle I feel offers a better understanding of the Bible story.
Here are random thoughts:
- Don Luis is wearing a dress. Children’s clothing really has changed.
- Ladies with impossibly wide dresses. Were they designed to stop escape attempts?
- Spot the Habsburg! Chins that could open tins.
- Why are there so many floating baby heads?
- So many upside-down books…
- Sometimes the frame is more impressive than the painting.
- Tight breeches everywhere. A surprising number of aristocrats looked smoother than a nullo.
Enough of that!
I said back in Zaragoza that I wanted to see more Goya – there was an orgy of his darker works in the lower rooms of the Prado, where I found more Nightmarish figures. Goya never seems to tell us what his paintings are about – I kind of like that because I think it enables us to bring more to them and think about them and relate them to whatever we are feeling. Indeed – that’s the thing, Goya’s nightmares of famine and war evoke a visceral reaction. I found Saturn devouring one of his sons to be partuclarly particularly uncomfortable. His various laughing people painting were creepy – demented and inhuman.
Another striking piece of work that I spent an awful long time trying to figure out was the veiled bust of Isabel II by Camillo Torteggiani. This was a WOW moment: it completely fooled my eyes. Every angle suggested soft translucent fabric draped over a face, yet the whole thing was carved from solid marble.
Sticking with sculpture, the classical sculpture is scarily accessible: a guardian told me off for getting too close! (I was trying to read the info). After that I was just so anxious about this Priceless work that I couldn’t relax. A lot of the statues had been restored, but the info would say which parts were original and which were new (ie 17th or 18th century) – and what the restorer had got wrong. However, the classical works lacked the wow of the Archeological Museum for me.
Another through provoking sculpture of the modern age was Ricardo Bellver’s Fame, who, like victory, has wings. In many ways I feel that it is a shame that we don’t have these anthropomorphic deities anymore embodying ideas and concepts: there is much wisdom in them.
I didn’t think much of the Bosch gallery. It was surreal, but oddly, Bosch left me rather cold. I admired the imagination, but emotionally I felt very little.
The Prado is unquestionably worth visiting. But I’ve realised that art galleries can reward curiosity more than endurance. Wandering room after room looking at everything can become overwhelming. Maybe having an artist, a period or even a single painting in mind could give the whole experience more focus.
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