The Painters of Spain Who Saw the Human Face as Timeless Inspiration

MADRID (By Alan Riding, NYT) April 5, 2009 — As a way of gauging the flows of artistic influence and inspiration, it has become quite the fashion for exhibitions to juxtapose well-known painters. Thus, recent shows like "Manet-Velázquez," "Van Gogh-Gauguin" and "Picasso-Ingres" have led to, say, "Turner-Whistler-Monet," soon to travel from Paris to London, and to "Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec," to be seen next fall at Tate Britain.

But in its current show, the Prado Museum in Madrid has reached still further. "The Spanish Portrait: From El Greco to Picasso," which runs through Feb. 6, offers the first-ever overview of Spanish portraits. More pertinently, by tracing a line that links old and modern masters across no fewer than five centuries, the Prado is claiming that Spain's painters make up a distinct category in the history of portraiture.

Certainly, no other museum could organize this exhibition, not only because Velázquez's group portrait, "Las Meninas," the crown jewel of the Prado's collection, cannot travel, but also because many works by the pillars of the show - El Greco, Velázquez, Goya and Picasso - are immediately at hand (in the case of Picasso, at the nearby Reina Sofia National Museum Art Center). That said, almost half the 87 paintings on display are on loan.

For this, the Prado offers a unique setting. Within three years, its exhibitions will be presented in a new annex, now under construction. But for the moment they "squat" inside the museum itself, temporarily evicting works normally displayed in its long central gallery. As a result, visitors leaving "The Spanish Portrait" step almost seamlessly into the rest of the collection, blurring the artificial line that so often isolates exhibitions.

In fact two galleries are open to visitors to both exhibition and collection. In the Salón de Actos, "Las Meninas" hangs in its traditional central place, although this rotunda now also contrasts Velázquez and Goya. In another there are four large equestrian portraits, one by Titian, two by Rubens and one by Velázquez. And in each case visitors can either seek out more Titian, Rubens, Velázquez and Goya in the collection or step back into the different logic of the exhibition.

"The Spanish Portrait" is presented chronologically, underlining its central thesis of continuity through a few exceptions, like having Velázquez's "Queen Mariana of Austria" and Picasso's "Woman in Blue" face each other across the years. The show's story, though, begins with religious paintings, with late 15th-century artists like Pedro Berruguete already giving personality to names from the distant past.

While religious painting continued into the 20th century, secular portraits, notably of the monarchy, were more important in establishing a Spanish style. The spark came from abroad - from Italy through Titian and from Flanders through Anthonis Mor - but soon Spanish painters in the court of Philip II, notably Alfonso Sánchez Coello and Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, made their mark.

Spain's first great portraitist, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, was himself born in Crete and studied in Italy before moving to Spain, where he became known simply as The Greek, El Greco. Although widely admired for his dramatic religious painting, his critical influence here was in portraiture, not least because he broke free of the constraints of the royal court by painting "civil portraits" of gentlemen in his home town of Toledo.

Renowned for the likenesses he achieved, El Greco stands out today for the individuality he gives to subjects whose identity is no longer important. To achieve this, he focused on the face, invariably framed by a white ruffle collar, and the hands of those he painted. Indeed, it is the dialogue between face and hand that distinguishes one of El Greco's most famous portraits, "A Nobleman With His Hand on his Chest."

In two other portraits here, "Jerónimo de Cevallos" and "An Elderly Gentleman," El Greco dwells only on the sad and solemn faces of aging men. In contrast, "Friar Hortensio Félix Paravicino" exudes energy and intelligence, as if the cleric, inblack and white robes, his left hand marking the page of a book, has been unexpectedly interrupted in his studies.

Oils by Ribera, Zurbarán and Murillo confirm the new freedom enjoyed by early 17th-century Spanish portrait painters. Ribera, who used ordinary Spaniards as the models for his great series of philosophers and saints, traveled to Italy to paint "The Bearded Woman." And typically, in "The Crucified Christ Contemplated by a Painter," Zurbarán portrays himself as the painter.

Then, with the arrival of Velázquez in the court of Philip IV, the genre reached new heights here. His early "civil portraits" were influenced by El Greco, whose work he studied. He also reached out to gentlemen, as in "Portrait of a Man"; dwarfs and buffoons, as in his satirical "Democritus"; and celebrities, like "Luis de Góngora" and "The Venerable Mother Jerónimo de la Fuente," in which the aged nun looks quite irritated by the demands of the painter.
But it was as a court painter that Velázquez made his name, bringing both remarkable technique and innovative composition to what had long been formal and predictable royal portraiture. Two portraits of Philip IV in this show capture the king 30 years apart, in both cases dressed simply in black, with power and majesty conveyed through his face. In contrast, in "Queen Mariana" Velázquez shows Philip's consort in full royal finery.

One purpose of portraits was to present future spouses to men they had not met. Nowhere was this more important that in Velázquez's paintings of Philip's daughter, the Infanta Margarita, who was engaged from an early age to her cousin, Leopold of Austria. The Prado exhibits the magnificent "Infanta Margarita in Blue," but the child princess is also a central figure along with Velázquez himself in "Las Meninas."

With its complex composition and teasing mirror game spawning endless study and speculation since its completion in 1656, "Las Meninas" was viewed by Velázquez as his masterpiece. Certainly its impact on Goya more than a century later is made clear here in two group portraits, "The Family of the Infante Don Luis" and "The Family of Charles IV." And, like Velázquez in "Las Meninas," Goya includes himself in the two oils.

In fact, since both Velázquez and Goya were court painters, the Prado can show how each tackled the same subject - the royal family, the king on horseback, the king hunting, the queen in regal pose. Goya also reached outside the monarchy, in one case painting "Francisco Cabarrús" in a pose reminiscent of Velázquez's "Pablo de Valladolid." Goya in turn had his own dark-eyed favorite, the Duchess of Alba, seen in two full-length portraits here.

Goya's portraits and self-portraits - his "Self-Portrait With Doctor Arrieta" here is notable - helped popularize portraiture so that in the 20th century a score of Spanish artists could live off the genre. Yet it was only at the turn of the century that Picasso restored the link to Goya, Velázquez and El Greco - by acknowledging them as his masters and imagining himself as their equal.

Just as his "Woman in Blue" recalls Velázquez's "Queen Mariana" and his "Señora Canals" evokes Goya's "Queen María With a Mantilla," just as his "Self-Portrait" as a bearded young man in 2001 seems to nod to Velázquez's "Portrait of a Man" painted 250 years earlier, Picasso also shared the old masters' fascination with deformities, as apparent in his one-eyed procuress, "La Celestina."

Yet, more than by technique and themes, where the line from El Greco to Picasso is best established is in the psychological realism of their subjects: notwithstanding how they looked in life, they spring from the canvas as individuals today. Appropriately, Picasso, whose work is being shown for the first time in the Prado, has the last word. In one of his final self-portraits, he depicts himself as little more than a skull. Yet barely a year before his death, his eyes still burn with passion.