Madrid's Big Three: Number 1 - The Prado

Madrid is one of Europe's capitals of art, with three magnificent collections within walking distance of each other which, if you are feeling energetic, could be tackled in one very long day.

We spent three leisurely days in the galleries, starting with the royal collection in the Museo del Prado. The building itself is nearly 200 years old and was gleaming in the sun on the day we approached along a lovely avenue of shade trees. All the great (and not so great) Spanish artists are named and portrayed along the flank of the exterior, with centre stage given to Velazquez, the royal court painter from the days of King Felipe IV, 400 years ago.

Once inside, we started with the classical sculpture from ancient Greece and Rome, which soon led to church paintings from the Italian Renaissance. The first truly great paintings we encountered were by Flemish and German painters with familiar names like Holbein, Durer and Cranach but also less known artists like van der Weyden.

One room is dominated by the bizarre fantasies painted by Brueghel the Elder and Hieronoymus Bosch (or 'Bosco' as the Spanish call him), including the original painting that can be found in thousands of college dorms, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Like all the photos I feature on my site, clicking the image opens a larger view.

It took some patience to work our way through the crowds in order to absorb all the details and if it hadn't been for all the jostling we could have easily spent an hour studying this and Brueghel's Triumph of Death, where an army of skeletons overwhelm a town.

Despite the fact every living person depicted is about to die, there is a grim fascination in seeing how everyone meets their doom in dozens of inventive ways. After awhile you might start rooting for the skeletons with their fixed grimaces, such as when they hold the door open to a huge coffin into which people are fleeing for safety. The only people oblivious to their doom are the canoodling lovers in the far right corner listening to music and lost in each other's eyes. We will all spend a long time looking at the lids of our coffins and perhaps the artist is suggesting that life's simple pleasures like love and music can help delay the inevitable.

The collection is skewed heavily towards Spain's own painters, such as Goya, whose often distressing paintings depict disturbing legends and disastrous war campaigns:

Saturn Devouring His Son (from the myth about the ancient giant who ate his own children because of a prophetic warning he'd be overthrown by one - his wife eventually tricked him by feeding him a boulder wrapped in a blanket and the son she saved grew up to be Jupiter, king of the gods);

The Colossus (a blind giant turns his back on the desperate civilians left in a tumult during an invasion, although some scholars now debate whether the work is that of Goya's or one of his students);
And a final example from Goya's paintings at the Prado, the Third of May 1808, when Spanish resistance against Napoleon's occupation was quashed.

We didn't find all the Spanish paintings as stirring or original. Ribera (born 1588) only churned out second-rate copies of Caravaggio (born 1571)...

Ribera's St Jerome above, Caravaggio's below

...and if you've seen one hallucinogenic Greco you've seen them all.

Black sky? Check. Contorted bodies dressed in lurid clothing, their glistening eyes turned upward? Check, check, check.

My main complaint about the dominance of Catholic theology in so much art of the time is that the same Biblical stories are repeated over and over. One Annunciation after another, followed by endless play dates between Jesus and John the Baptist, etc etc. The Prado offers some unique devotional art, such as floating martyrs...

...and saints partaking of some unorthodox sustenance.

Sticking with the theme, we also found this bearded lady nursing a baby.

And for something completely different, a travelling exhibition of pre-Raphaelite artists was on view, including Leighton's Flaming June...

...and the sacrilicious Escape of the Heretic by Millais, with a wide-eyed priest trussed up in his own rosary beads.



Pride of place at the Prado is given to Velazquez. Compared to the above highlights, his works of aristocratic frivolities appear tame.

The works are accomplished and clever, but often tame nonetheless, with nothing bizarre or grosteque intruding on royal life (aside from the court's many dwarfs).

Which makes this devotional composition all the more interesting by contrast. There is no finery or pomposity here.

Except this isn't a Biblical story, but rather a Classical tale of the god Vulcan at his forge. The haloed figure is Apollo, not Jesus. It gives some indication of the status and freedom Velazquez enjoyed as a painter in the royal court, to be able to paint non-religious subjects.

His most famous work, The Maids of Honour, is at the very centre of the museum. Velazquez himself stands in the painting, albeit in the shadows and almost unnoticeable compared to the royal children cavorting in front of him. A mirror reflects the images of the king and queen looking in at the scene, but framed in such a way they appear almost indistinguishable amongst the paintings lining the walls. A nobleman draws back a curtain and steps into the room, giving the flat canvass a remarkable sense of depth and activity.

The subject of many a dissertation, it's probably the single most-analysed work of art in the world, so I won't be adding any more to the debate. I hope you haven't minded this little detour into art history, but the galleries of Madrid contain some of the most compelling works of all time and the opportunity to see all these treasures makes for the trip of a lifetime!

So we'll take a breather and try to enjoy some flamenco before tackling the remaining two of the Big Three.