El Prado

El Prado

I just can't match her smile

I feel like Sister Wendy talking about museums, but what is the greatest way to differentiate cities except by culture?  This can include food, history, architecture, weather, or my favorite art because it incorporates a few areas at once.  If you are looking for a city to visit or what to expect there, I suggest a history refresher.  History can tell you a lot about a place.  When were they rich and powerful? When were they destitute?  When were they subjugated?  (If you are not familiar with Sister Wendy, she was a nun who discussed her love of art on the BBC.  She eloquently and intimately talked about art in all her fine penguinery--and that distinctive smile.)

 America was on top of the world financially in the 20^th Century and the art acquired, and building built reflect this reality.  Spain on the other hand was wildly rich around the Age of Discover, after Columbus—so rich that gold and silver lost value due to the amount that flooded the market.  During this era, Spain acquired or commissioned the best art, build many grand cities, and blossomed in general.  Is the art good in the capital? You bet your dupa.

Goya's Saturn eating his son from his dark period.  Bad ass, huh?

El Prado is the crowning gem of museums in Spain.  It really is the Spanish Met, Louvre, or British Museum.  El Prado hold art from the 12^th to early 20^th Century. The collection has over 7,000 paintings with about 1,300 on display.  Millions of people visit annually. I often look at some countries and muse they have an embarrassing excess in in artistic proliferation.  Holland has 17 million today yet produced Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and other insanely talented artists.  Spain is another one of those countries.  Picasso, Dalí, Goya, Velázquez, Miró, and El Greco were all Spanish Artist.  (Yes, El Greco was born in Greece but worked in Spain.). El Prado is the definitive place to experience many of these artists finest works.  Another way to discover a museum is to see who a patron of a certain artist was.  For example, a king in Austria loved Bruegel and someone in Philly loved Duchamp.  How else would the wildly bizarre, magical, mystical, decadent, monstrous, whimsical, confusing, confronting, masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch end up in Spain? Someone liked it enough to buy it.  There is a theory he hallucinated on tainted grain.  When see you it in person, you think, Theory?  Damn that painting makes my top list of things to see in life. 

They ain't right

The museum holds the groundbreaking Las Meninas, complete with dwarf as well as Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son.  The painting that makes me chuckle the most is Goya's The Family of Charles IV.  It is a great example of the intersection between history, satire, and art.  The royal family was intimately, well, inbred.  This common practice did not make for the brightest of monarchies.  In addition, the magical element mercury was a curiosity in the palace.  Mercury is what made haberdashers go, well, crazy.  It causes brain damage.  Goya was commissioned to paint the family.  Take a moment to look at the family.  None of them look exactly right. Someone isn't even looking at the artist.  My favorite is the queen.  Have you even seen a chicken tilt its head because something has caught its attention?  There she is.  The reaction to the painting was…They loved it!

The Third of May, 1808 by Goya

The museum also tells the story of Spain.  How many paintings can you think of that historically capture a moment?  Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze and Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix in France come to mind.  Spain has several.  The 3^rd of May 1808 by Goya comes to mind first.  It commemorates the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War.  The desperate look of the victims and the aggressive stance of Napoleon's troops really capture that day and its horrors.  The picture is also massive—it is 8 ½ feet by 11 ½ feel long.  It is almost life-size and you are watching the firing squad and the pleas up close and in person. 

The Garden of Earthly Delights

 

A trip to El Prado really capture the corazón of Spain.  You learn about it in World History but only from a 'Ferdinand and Isabella" tale or "The Spanish Inquisition was bad" perspective.  It Is a huge country with a rich deep nuanced history.  Go to Madrid and visit the museums.  I suggested a multi-day pass for El Prado.  By the end of the day, I was like, damn, I really have to stop and look at this one even though I'm ready to drop.