In one’s Spanish travels, one quickly comes up against El Greco, especially in Toledo, his home town. His work is relatively easy to spot; as I say, all those long faces. There’s something rather modernist about it, or at least he’s influenced a lot of modern Spanish artists. One thing about seeing one after the other of his works is that you realize he had, maybe, about five models that he used over and over. The painting of Saint This looks exactly like the painting of Saint That which looks exactly like the painting of Saint Whosey Majoosey. The only thing that separates them is the iconography, at which point one remembers that, A, literacy was far from rampant at the time, and B, every saint or angel seems to have a symbol set attached. You can recognize St. Jerome a mile away, for instance, by the book (he translated the Bible into Latin), the lion (he removed a thorn from the poor dear’s foot) and the red hat (he was a cardinal); often he’s also looking like quite the hermit. The evangelists each have their special icon (eagle, lion, angel, bull). And so forth an so on. And, of course, an El Greco would not be painting all his pictures for the same venue, so no one would notice the repetition of faces. But when one does, one does remark on the unremarkableness.
But when it comes to repetition, Velasquez is the one who takes the cake, because over and over again as official court artist he painted the members of the royal family. The portraits all bear a family resemblance, and I hate to say it, but if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. He’s hard not to love, though. His other portraits are much more varied, and all of them are full of life and vigor, and the whole set had a very direct influence on Manet (who had a very direct influence on everyone else in his day, up to our own), who traveled down to Madrid to check them out, and whose own work is a strong reflection of what old Diego was up to a couple of hundred years earlier. Compare the two when you get a chance. On top of that, the moderns claim that the painting “Las Meninas”
may be the first great modern work in its attempt to capture the moment, much as a photograph does (or ought to). Draw your own conclusions, but if there was ever a picture that at least captures the imagination, and that you want to see in person (at the Prado), this is it. Meninas is something of the icon of Spain, or at least of Spanish art. You can buy the Infanta’s image (the little girl in the middle) on everything imaginable of the souvenir persuasion, which I have to admit I resisted until I came upon Picasso’s Meninas series in Barcelona—he did innumerable theme and variations on it—where I finally succumbed to a postcard.The third of the Big Three, historical division, is Goya. I’m afraid that we didn’t get very Goya’d up because a lot of work that one would normally come upon was removed to a special exhibit that we didn’t get to. But I know enough about Goya to ultimately come down as a Velasquez kind of guy when given my druthers about which artist to pursue.
My favorite museum in Madrid was not the Prado, however. Sure, there’s plenty of important work there one wants to see, but to a degree there’s a sameness to it, as in, all major capital cities have some big mother of a museum with collections amassed by their royal families at some point, and here’s another one. Nothing wrong with that, but it sort of transcends nationality, beyond the obvious (i.e., more Velasquez in Spain, more Rembrandt in the Netherlands). The place that blew us away was the Thyssen. Lots of good stuff, but especially the late 19th and early 20th stuff collected by the Missus, which was room after room of surprises, art you’ve never seen before by artists you love, or artists you’ve never heard of and instantly fall in love with. I want her collection for my house. If I get it, I’ll let you come over and see it, much as she does. (http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen_ing/home.html)
Finally, the third major Madrid museum is the Reine Sofia. Lots of modern stuff, including most notably Picasso’s Guernica. When I was young, Guernica hung at MOMA, and you saw it easily enough, and it was one of many. At Reine Sofia, it is something of a tourist magnet, much like, say, the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. You can’t get near it, and it’s surrounded by nattering chatterers and you just thank your lucky stars you already know it well from your youth because this is just no way to see art.
You can do worse than Madrid, obviously, for seeking out great art. Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” will amuse the most art-hating type, while Velasquez will get the blood and brain boiling, plus there’s all your usual Renaissance and Middle Ages stuff, a startling Antonello da Messina ("Cristo morto sostenuto da un angelo": look at that angel's face; this is right up there with his Annunciate) all the way up to some amazing Monet and Van Gogh… It’s worth a trip. I’m glad I took it.
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