Raphael ability to express emotions and evoke feelings

The Prado museum in Madrid, Spain, dedicates an exhibition to Raphael Sanzio and his workshop. This exhibition is very particular, because is devoted to the last years of the master’s life, when he lived and worked in Rome, as one of the most influential artists of his time.

One cannot speak of Raphael Sanzio in a few words. This is only a simple invitation to know him following different paths characterized by spaces and emotions.

The exhibit includes more than seventy signed works, paintings and drawings, all of them created in his last seven years of life; from the start of the pontificate of Leo X (1513) up to the artist’s death in 1520.

Space in the exhibition will also be given to the work of Raphael’s principal pupils and followers, such as Giulio Romano (c. 1449-1546) and Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528), who worked under the master’s close supervision on the late commissions he received. 

You will admire some masterworks like The St. Cecilia’s altar piece (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale), and I highly encourage you to take a look to  another holy woman, the Santa Catalina from the  Spanish painter Fernando Yañez de la Almedina , painted a few years before that of Raphael and extremely beautiful and evocative (probably my favorite canvas  at the Prado)

Raphael´s works is not only the result of his Renaissance ideals or the multiple artistic influences he received during his stay in Florence and in Rome. The light in his paintings is Italy´s  light and he always carried inside him that light, that air that left a lasting mark in his soul.

One can be a great painter only when he has a great soul and is able to express his soul through his artwork. Raphael´s drawings reveal his sweetness, strong sensations, and complex emotions.

And all of this is present in the the portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione ; where Raphael gives us a sensitive, lifelike image of his friend ,an image which, in a letter to his wife, Castiglione described as rather hauntingly lifelike. The gloomy tones and the immediacy of the picture show us a man who is listening attentively and thoughtfully to our conversation and seems about to respond, rather than someone so far away and above us that we can have no hope of gaining his ear. This image had a tremendous impact on later portrait painters from Rubens to Velázquez (in the portrait of Conde-Duque of Olivares)  and beyond, and for very good reasons. It masterfully celebrates intelligence, good taste, and good manners so that, even if we did not know the identity of the sitter (Italian courtier, diplomat, and writer, best known for his (The Courtier) , these qualities would be readily apparent to any sensitive observer.

On 11th of March 1525 Baldassarre Castiglione arrived in Madrid; and was received solemnly at the Imperial court, where he congratulated Charles V for his victory at Pavia.

It's been 487 years and in Madrid we are excited to receive this gentleman again. 

After his death in Toledo 1529 a monument was erected in the sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, outside of his birthplace at Mantua. It was designed by the pupil of Raphael, well represented in this exhibition too: Giulio Romano, and was inscribed with the following words:

“Baldasssare Castiglione of Mantua, endowed by nature with every gift and the knowledge of many disciplines, learned in Greek and Latin literature, and a poet in the Italian (Tuscan) language, was given a castle in Pesaro on account of his military prowess, after he had conducted embassies to both great Britain and Rome. While he was working at the Spanish court on behalf of Clement VII, he drew up the Book of the Courtier for the education of the nobility; and in short, after Emperor Charles V had elected him Bishop of Avila, he died at Toledo, much honored by all the people. He lived fifty years, two months, and a day. His mother, Luigia Gonzaga, who to her own sorrow outlived her son, placed this memorial too him in 1529”

I hope to have able able to give you some simple ideas to come and enjoy the exhibition

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Soon after graduating I shared a theatrical house with several colleagues in the central street of La Bola in Madrid. It was a lovely house in a wonderful location. My roommates had a poster of two girls hanging to the light of the window. At first sight, I thought the poster was of two African girls. I probably imagine that because the colors were green and brown. I had never seen anything from that painter before, but I really liked the picture and I became interested in it and also in the Brücke movement.
In brief, the German Expressionists seemed fascinating to me. Just a couple of months ago I traveled to Berlin trying to find, in vain, those expressionists. I felt like Ulysses who went on his journey to Itaca; I discovered wonderful art galleries that captivated me while in search of those German Expressionists. Especially, The Gemälde.

This week, to my surprise, an exhibition of those German expressionists open only a few meters from my house. This enigmatic painter, Ludwig Kirchner (Aschaffenburg, 1880 - Frauenkirch, Switzerland, 1938), who drew inspiration from French Fauvism and Primitivism was a part of my youth. His work combines bold colors, which play a more important role in his paintings than silhouettes or forms, with lurid and morbid subjects.

Roughly half of the works in the 153-piece retrospective come from the Swiss museum, while the rest have been loaned by 27 institutions and private collections in Europe and America.

The Expressionist group Brücke, was established in Dresden in 1905, and Kirchner moved to Berlin in 1911. Here his sense of rebellion against the confining principles of academic painting and the stifling rules of bourgeois society took a new turn, as the charged atmosphere and energy of the city was felt in an expression of acute perspectives, jagged strokes, dense angular forms, and caustic color. The street life in Berlin, in particular the familiar presence of prostitutes, identified by their elaborate plumed hats, captured Kirchner's eye and inspired this spectacular series of art work. Shown for the first time in Madrid, these works radiate the vitality, decadence, and underlying mood of imminent danger that characterized Berlin on the eve of World War I.

I trust that the exhibition will seem, inspiring and wonderful, to you.

The Bibles of Sepharad

The Crossed Lives of the Text and Its Readers 

Don´t miss the exhibition at the National Library about the Hebrew manuscripts produced in the Iberian Peninsula during medieval times , they are  so poignand!

After being read by Jews and converts, and later collected by various owners and institutions, many of these manuscripts are travelling for the first time from their place of origin to show a piece of Spanish cultural history in this exhibition.

During the middle ages, the Hebrew Bible was the backbone of Jewish cultural and religious life in the Iberian Peninsula. This exhibition explores the history of these volumes, their relationship with readers and collectors and the way they were read and interpreted by Iberian Jews of the epoch.

The exhibition is divided into eight sections: 'The Bible', 'Learning', 'Liturgy', 'Biblical Exegesis', 'Polemics', 'Reason and Revelation', 'Reading Spaces and Types of Reading' and 'Collecting in Spain.' The Hebrew language, interpretations of the sacred text and the Bible's influence on architecture are just some of the subjects covered in this show.

Chagall in Madrid Thyssen Bornemitza Museum

The exhibition traces the evolution of Chagall life

Marc Chagall developed a highly expressive and colourist pictorial style that was closely linked to his own life and to the religious and popular traditions of the Russian Jewish community. Chagall combined elements from Cubism, Fauvism and Robert Delaunay’s Orphism to create a personal style that is difficult to categorise. Born in the small Russian town of Vitebsk, Chagall’s long life (he lived to be almost 100) was marked by the major historic events of the first half of the 20th century. A tireless creator and one always open to new experiences and to learning, Chagall’s output is rich and varied. Using his particular and unique style, he was permanently open to exploring new techniques (oil, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, stained glass, etc) and to undertaking new projects. One important section of this exhibition, for example, is devoted to his significant activitie s as a book illustrator. Throughout his life Chagall was surrounded by poets and writers who were his friends and with whom he maintained close and mutually creative relations. Breton, Malraux, Cendrars and Apollinaire were among those who considered him a “literary painter” and it is evident that Chagall loved literature, particularly the message of freedom contained within words, which he was able to enrich with his fantastical and colourful compositions.

Chagall was essentially a master of colour; his tones vibrate in different intensities and function to highlight the subjects of his paintings. His blues, greens, reds and yellows fill with life his real or imaginary characters, who inhabit a special universe of their own. Everything is possible in this constantly surprising world based on real or imagined stories: a violinist, a rabbi, two lovers, an acrobat, a landscape and a wide range of fantastical animals fill his compositions. In this world, colours and surprising figures and animals come together in previously unknown ways, resulting in a unique combination that made Chagall a forerunner of Surrealism, as that movement’s theoretician, André Breton, noted: “With Chagall, metaphor made its triumphant entry into modern painting.”

The Bible has been a source of inspiration for Marc Chagall ever since he was a boy living in the ghetto of Vitebsk in White Russia.

 ‘Ever since my earliest youth I have been fascinated by the Bible. I have always believed that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time...The Bible is an echo of nature, and this I Have endeavoured to transmit....In art everything is possible, so long as it is based on love.’

Chagall Masterpieces transport us into a magical world teeming with fabulous creatures and characters. His poetic reach takes in both Biblical themes and the world of acrobats and artistes, one of his most moving motifs being lovers entwined in each others’ arms and wreathed in a myriad of flowers. Drawing on his Jewish-Russian roots as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, Marc Chagall continued reimagining this essentially spiritual narrative right to the end of his days and in doing so conveyed a message of hope and freedom that even now, at the dawn of the third millennium, has lost none of its relevance or urgency.

The exhibition will be on display until May the 5th 2012

The Orden of the Golden Fleece

In my visits to the PradoMuseum with children I like to encourage them to look at those gentlemen carrying around their neck a ”ram” figurine, since they will probably were Kings of Spain. This a perfect point to start the story about the mythological origins of this country, Spain.

The name of the order refers to the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece, a gift from the gods, which brought a source of prosperity to whoever possessed it. It evokes the tale of chivalry, heroism, perils and teamwork led Jason, Hercules, and the Argonauts in order to bring the precious talisman to Pelias King from the Asian city of Colchis.

“La orden del Toisón de Oro” (The Order of the Golden Fleece) was an institution that Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, founded in 1420 to defend the ideals of chivalry, and whose sovereignty passed to the Crown of Castile when Philip the Fair, son and heir of Mary of Burgundy, married Juana I of Castile, daughter of the Catholic Kings. Since then, the King of Spain presides over the Order, and a gold chain with the talisman is conferred to the Knights of the Order at their inauguration.

I highly recommend the exhibition at Foundation Carlos de Amberes (Charles of Antwerp) in Madrid. It’s a nice opportunity to learn about our history and appreciate good masterpieces, such as “The Martydom of S. Andrew”, the patron of the Order, by Rubens, which belongs to the Foundation since 1639 , or the only work in our country by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres “Philip V confers the Golden Fleece to the Duke of Berwick”.




Notice in several pictures the cross-shaped cross, called Burgundy. It was the emblem of the Thirds of Flanders and it is still part of the shields of the King and the Spanish Army.And now, go back to the Prado and look the flags at Velazquez masterpiece “ The surrounded of Breda”

Picasso with us

I was born the same year that Picasso died. Today is the 130th birthday of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), whose artistic genius has influenced the development of modern and contemporary art with unparalleled magnitude.

For me, Picasso represents the passion for living without measure

The Guernica is probably his most passionate masterpiece, its not un ordinary picture but an anti-war hymn and a symbol of the defense of liberties that is at long last arriving in a democratic Spain in 1981 , as is creator wished. At this year in Spain a lond awaited democracy is still being consolidated.It has come from the MOMA and is going to be housed in the Cason del Buen Retito…a really good scenery for the huge piece.The first time I saw the Guernica  I was so overwhelmed I had to sit down in the middle of the room. I had seen reproductions in art books, but nothing really prepared me for the magnitude of the real thing. It is huge and has a huge outpouring of emotion flowing off the canvas.

Sit in front of it and let it wash over you.

www.museoreinasofia.es

A painting filled with mystery

            I love going back to Venice. There is no other place comparable in the world.
My intention was to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and write about it ... but my room’s view was the wooden bridge spanning the Grand Canal just in front of the Gallerie de la Accademia and the temptation to go back to the Galleria was too strong to resist.

            I had not been there since a long time ago and did not remember the decadent and chaotic state of the rooms, which produce an intense halo of romance. Two months ago I had the chance of seeing The Tempest, in the Hermitage of San Petersburg. They had welcomed the masterpiece with high respect and admiration and it was beautifully displayed and lit. Yesterday, at the Accademia I was again trapped by its brilliance.

            A lot has been surmised about this painting, including a range of interpretations ranging from pastoral to mythological and biblical. Amidst all these speculations however, two things are certain: the dominance and beauty of the natural setting - with the impending storm (tempest) churning away in the background. Before Giorgione, other artists had, indeed, painted figures with a landscape background, but the perfect blend of Nature and human nature was his achievement.

            The quality of line and the sensuousness of color nowhere cast their spells over us more strangely than in Giorgione's pictures, and by these means he created new and extraordinary effects. In these purely pictorial qualities he is supreme and claims a place with the few quintessential artists of the world.

            As an instrument of expression, then, color is used by Giorgione more naturally and effectively than it is by any of the Venetian painters. It appeals directly to our senses, like rare old stained glass, and seems to be of the very essence of the object itself. Maybe this painting doesn't "mean" anything at all; maybe, like music, it simply evokes a mood, a feeling.