The Prado

The Prado in Madrid—along with the National Gallery in London, the Louvre, Uffizi, Pinakothek, Hermitage and Metropolitan in New York—is one of the great museums in the world.  The art works described in The Prado Masterpieces (Thames & Hudson, 496pp, £50/$65) range from ancient Greek sculpture to a painting of 1909, and the 385 color illustrations are enhanced by concise comments.  Many of the great Netherlandish paintings, including van der Weyden and Bosch, were captured during the long Spanish occupation of the Low Countries.  The collection of great Titians came from the patronage of the Spanish kings and the leading Venetian artists.

Titian’s Venus and Music (1550) shows a high-breasted, heavy-bellied nude reclining on a white pillow and crimson velvet cloth, and below a hanging red curtain whose colors contrast to her ivory white skin.  With curly blond hair parted in the middle, she’s decorated with a gold necklace, bracelets and ring.  With her right arm gracefully extended along her ample thigh, she looks down and with her left hand fondles a frisky brown dog standing to reach her with its tail erect.  In front of her and providing a strong contrast to her nudity, a splendidly dressed man with a white collar, silky suit and long dangling sword interrupts his organ playing to boldly look backwards at her enticing body.  As Shakespeare writes in the opening of Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love, play on.”  The stiff vertical organ pipes are parallel to the two rows of well-trimmed trees on either side of a huge green park in the background, where a couple stroll and the sculpture of a naked satyr appears beneath a flowing fountain.  With all the sexual suggestiveness surrounding this tempting Venus, the gentleman won’t be playing music for much longer.  Like Francesca, who interrupted her reading with Paolo in Dante’s Inferno, he’ll play “no further, nothing more at all.”

Venus and Musician or Venus with an Organist and a Dog, Prado, c. 1550

Goya’s The Naked Maja (1800) portrays a lower-class, fashionably dressed (or undressed) woman, who reclines on a green velvet couch, two puffed-up white pillows and a silky sheet.  Her curly black hair covers half her forehead and reaches down to her shoulder, and she clasps her hands behind her head to raise her ample breasts.  Her eyes are dark, her nose thin, her cheeks rosy, her lips small.  Her carpet of pubic hair leaves a faint trail up to her navel; her knees and feet come chastely together.  More realistic than mythological, she’s younger and quite different from Titian’s voluptuous Venus, who ignores the distracted organist.  More pert and perky, both innocent and indecent, the Maja boldly returns the gaze of viewers, who stare appreciatively at her nude body.  When the Spanish Inquisition forbade nude paintings, Goya painted his Maja furtively and showed her in secret.

Goya Maja naga2

Dürer’s elegant Self-Portrait (1498), aged 27, portrays him seated and waist-length, with a slim figure, mustache, untrimmed beard and long blond hair touching his shoulders.  His handsome manly face has eyes looking to his right, has a strong nose and full lips.  His lavish clothes emphasize his social position as a nobleman, not an artisan.  He wears a black-and-white, wide-striped silk cap with a long tassel along his hair, tunic secured by a twisted rope over a gold-braided white shirt that shows his chest, full white sleeves, and a tight black-and-white cloth gauntlet that matches the color of his cap.  His grey-gloved hands, resting on the table in front of him, are firmly clasped with interlocking thumbs.  The right background has a mountain landscape that reveals the Alps he would cross to reach Italy.  This self-portrait conveys Dürer’s intelligence, pride and virile authority.

Albrecht Durer, Self-Portrait at 26
1498

Titian’s Self-Portrait (1562), aged 72 and more monk than gallant, contrasts greatly with Dürer’s youthful self-image.  The old man portrays himself half-length and in three-quarter view.  His austere black skull cap and heavy black cloak are relieved only by a fringe of grey hair, ruffled white collar and double gold chain that represents his noble status, granted by the Emperor Charles V.  Ravaged by time, with furrowed face, high forehead, deep-set eyes, long sharp nose, and mature growth of thick mustache and long beard, he holds a paintbrush in his lowered right hand.  In this bravely realistic image Titian seems to be confronting mortality but—amazingly—he still had another 14 years to paint.

Self-portrait of the Italian painter Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1490-1576), better known as Titian.

El Greco’s The Nobleman with His Hand on His Chest (1580) combines piety and ferocity.  Dressed in black against a greyish-black background, he has black hair, moustache and beard, sallow skin and heavy-lidded dark eyes, and wears an elaborate V-shaped white ruff beneath his V-shaped beard.  The crucifix-shaped hilt and handle of the embossed Toledo sword on his left contrasts with his fingers spread across his heart that touch his half-covered gold chain and medallion of office.  The nobleman stares straight out at the spectator with a calm but menacing expression.  (You wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.)  The hand suggests a vow of revenge, the sword a forceful means to carry out his plan.

The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest

Bronzino’s Don García de’ Medici (1550) portrays the chubby child of Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora of Toledo.  He’s only three years old but assumes a regal pose.  The well-fed princeling has a round face, huge forehead, aureole of stand-up blond hair, large wide-apart eyes, small nose, jowly cheeks and double chin.  He stands waist high against a subtle blueish-grey background and stares straight ahead, holding an orange blossom in his lowered right hand and an amulet that hangs from a cord trailing around his thick neck and into the fingers of his raised left hand.  He’s confined in a lavish tight red silk suit, pressing against the outline of his tummy, that’s decorated with a gold-braided collar.  His expression is both curious and quietly self-assured.  Don García died of malaria, aged fifteen, en route to Spain with his mother, and was unable to continue the powerful Medici dynasty.

Angelo Bronzino – Don Garcia de’ Medici

The title of Velázquez’s Las Meninas (“The Maids of Honour”) is misleading.  The painting is really about “Velazquez and the Infanta”.  When it is read from left to right instead of traditionally focusing on the maids in the center, the painter-subject assumes a major role.  He stands in front of an enormous canvas, twice his height and seen from the back, holding a paint brush and palette.  He has a dark complexion, long black hair and flowing mustache.  Like Dürer and Titian, he emphasises his noble rank, proudly carries a chamberlain’s key on his belt and wears on his chest the Order of Santiago, graciously bestowed by the King of Spain.

Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez,

The next three figures are the two dark-haired, full-skirted maidens attending the princess, one of whom offers her a cup of water from a ceramic jug.  The frail, self-possessed little five-year-old Infanta Margarita—the physical opposite of Bronzino’s robust Don García—has long blond hair, very pale face, tight breath-squeezing bodice and wide skirt supported by interior wires.  A female dwarf, who looks remarkably like the seated mastiff, contrasts with the Infanta’s delicate beauty, while a little boy dressed in red playfully kicks the sitting dog, which ignores him.  A nun and an attendant stand behind and guard the girls.  A royal courtier in the rear appears, with his feet on the steps of an open doorway, illuminated from behind by a bright light.  Most innovative and intriguing, reflected in a huge rear mirror next to the courtier, are the king and queen, who stand in front of the Infanta but are not in the picture.  In this gigantic dark hall decorated with wall-to-wall paintings, Las Meninas records the formal intricacies of Spanish court life.

Titian’s equestrian portrait of The Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg (1548) portrays his victorious patron, the Holy Roman Emperor and most powerful man in Europe.  At Mühlberg on the Elbe River, 50 miles east of Leipzig, he defeated the Lutheran army.  Beneath a streaked blood-red sky, Charles and his charging horse have red plumes on their heads.  He has a red band around his helmet, a red sash across his chest and a huge red carapace around his horse—perhaps signifying the blood of his enemies in battle.  He sits stiffly in shining gold-embossed armor, his prominent bearded Habsburg jaw juts forward.  His long steel-tipped wooden lance extends beyond his horse’s head, gripped by his metal fist and ready to pierce his enemy.  Charles represents the impressive image of a Catholic knight and heroic military power.

Portrait of Charles V on horseback, painted by Titian in Augsburg (1548) 

The armoured emperor rides bravely to war.  Three centuries later, bare-chested partisans are slaughtered in war.  Goya’s The Third of May 1808 in Madrid (1814) shows the brutal execution of Spanish rebels during Napoleon’s invasion and occupation of their country.  Eight robotic French soldiers with high square hats, black boots and long swords touching the ground point their row of rifles very close to the prisoners, who have either been executed or are waiting to be killed.  The central victim, illuminated by a large square lantern on the ground, has dark hair and skin.  Stripped to an open white shirt and yellow trousers, he drops to his knees and raises his arms in helpless supplication, a gesture of both defiance and despair.  Three corpses lie in front of him, spilling their pools of blood on the sandy ground.  Three living comrades, who cannot bear to watch the cruelty, shield their faces from the horror and beg for mercy.  A monk kneeling beside the victim prays in vain.  A hill behind him absorbs the stray bullets.  The grey buildings of Madrid appear beneath the dark sky.  Goya’s dramatic and heroic image inspired hope in the Spanish patriots who helped Wellington’s British army to drive the French out of Spain in 1814.

The Third of May by Francisco Goya

This superb volume invites the reader to compare the same subjects—nudes, portraits, children and war—by great painters.  It is the next best thing to actually visiting the Prado.

Jeffrey Meyers, FRSL, has had thirty-three books translated into fourteen languages and seven alphabets, and published on six continents.  When he first visited the Prado in 1957, the rooms were dark and dingy, the paintings badly hung, and the attendant had to be paid to turn on the lights. 

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