El Greco to Velazquez Art During the Reign of Philip Iii
Ronni Baer co-curated "El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip 3", the new show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A few weeks agone we sat down to talk about what she wanted that show to achieve.
LACAYO: Art historians usually treat the reign of Philip Iii as a kind of so-so interregnum between his father Philip II, who was a major collector and Titian's great patron, and his son Philip Four, who had Velazquez equally his courtroom painter. What fabricated you decide to take a new look at Philip III's overlooked era?
BAER: Sarah Schroth [who co-curated this show] is an onetime friend of mine from grad schoolhouse. She had institute the inventories of the Duke of Lerma. [Lacayo: Lerma was Philip III's chief adviser and one of the biggest collectors in early 17th century Europe.] Sarah wanted to do a show almost them. At the aforementioned time, when I first came to the MFA as a curator in that location was talk of doing a Spanish prove. We have 2 bully paintings here in Boston that bookend Philip's era — the El Greco portrait of Fray Hortensio…
Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino, El Greco, 1609 /Image: MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
….and the Velazquez portrait of Luis de Gongara.
Luis de Gongora y Argote, Velazquez, 1622 /Image: MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
When I was a pupil of art history I used to wonder "How did we ever become from El Greco to Velazquez? Philip Three'due south reign was only 23 years, but what a huge change." For me what was interesting was that there were artists people have never heard of who help explain the changes during that catamenia.
LACAYO: One matter that's surprising about Spanish fine art is that they developed a form of realism as powerful as anything the Dutch were doing, but they weren't a club that you would expect to do that. The Dutch were a Protestant center form democracy; it'due south no surprise that they create a market for scenes of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Simply Spain was a fairly rigid Cosmic monarchy. The Spanish didn't produce a lot of household and tavern scenes the manner the Dutch did, but they filled their religious pantings with recognizable humans. El Greco"southward saints await like existent people. And Velazquez started his career making kitchen scenes.
An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, Velazquez, 1618/ Image: THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND
BAER: That'south right. And the testify is also about introducing artists who were doing that who were less well known than El Greco or Velazquez, like Juan Bautista Maino and Luis Tristan. Tristan'due south amalgam of Italy and Spain is very interesting.
Adoration of the Magi, Juan Bautista Maino, 1612/ Paradigm: MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO, MADRID
LACAYO: But let's start with El Greco — what was it that turned him in the direction of bringing a more recognizable humanity into religious pictures?
BAER: His time in Italian republic, earlier he arrived in Spain. Going to Venice and seeing all that incredible Venetian painting. All of the Castilian painters of this era took a lot from Italian art, but from dissimilar artists. You can meet Maino looking at Gentileschi. You can encounter El Greco looking at Tintoretto. They all looked at whatever struck their chord. And also Flanders was very important. The impress trade was enormous, likewise as the ownership and selling of paintings.
LACAYO: I was interested in some of the first pictures yous have in the evidence, the royal portraits like the one of a young Philip in wearing apparel armor past Juan Pantoja de la Cruz. The representation of the body and the armor is very total and real, only the face is nonetheless very impassive and "official".
King Philip III of Kingdom of spain, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, ca. 1601-1602 / Image: KUNSTHISTORICHES MUSEUM, VIENNA
BAER: That kind of work is coming out of a very long and established tradition. You have naturalistic shadow and modeling of the trunk, it's moving towards naturalism, but the top part, the confront, isn't. It'southward not that the artists can't get there, only they purposely cull not to apply the skills of naturalism to the confront, because the face up is the fashion to remove the monarch from humanity. He's a quasi-divine effigy. And and so along comes Rubens, who's doing something very different. [Lacayo: Rubens visited Kingdom of spain twice, and his very robust piece of work made a deep impression in that location.] You tin just imagine how much the Duke of Lerma wanted Rubens to paint him.
The Duke of Lerma, Rubens, ca. 1603/Image: MUSEO NACIONAL DEL PRADO, MADRID
Source: https://entertainment.time.com/2008/04/25/a_talk_with_ronni_baer/
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