Some Notes on Paintings at the Prado

I don't make it to Europe all that often. I was in Geneva and Barcelona to present at the International AIDS Conferences in 1998 and 2002. Before that was my backpacker trip in 1979. I always go with the idea that I can't see everything, and I can always return.

This summer would be my first art-specific trip, and in that vein I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Goya and Manet by walking the halls of the Prado specifically to see the paintings of Velazquez. I relied more on my Moleskine than on my camera, and I thought it might offer a little insight to transcribe here what caught my eye.

Fra Angelico's Annunciation

The exterior has Adam and Eve being expelled from the garden. the 3/4 of the image to the right is about redemption. Oddly enough, if the annunciation is about a new deal from god, you can't have the subject of the painting be about the new unless you're reminded what the old deal was. It almost seems odd after looking at this painting that it would not be found in other annunciations.

The floor swirls with marbled yellow, green, and light blue, reproducing the colors in the undercoat of the angel and the lining of Mary's robe. All these visual cues that point to interiors, makes me think about how important interiors are to the subject matter of the painting, because the really important thing--what's happening inside Mary's uterus--can't be depicted.

A back room is seen between Mary and the angel, lit from a back window that peeks out to the garden that's seen on the left. The back room's austerity contrasts nicely with the gilt used on the paintings subjects. Very nice.

Dirk Bouts' Annunciation

It shows the same subject as the Bouts at the Getty. In both paintings the angel admonishes. This one at the Prado is much more decorated, with the angel wings made of peacock feathers.

Brueghel the Elder's Triumph of Death

A king in the left corner is cradled by death, who holds an empty hourglass. There's a cast of hundred, both living and dead. Juxtaposed nicely with Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, on the opposite wall.

Goya's Milkmaid of Burdeos

Painted the year before his death, it was a gift to the woman pictured. I saw this painting at the show at the Frick of Goya's work painted in his final years in France. There is something to be said for running across a familiar work in a new setting. Like stumbling upon a long-lost friend.

Goya's Black Paintings

Taken from the walls of his home and transferred to canvas. Some of the more horizontal pictures are incredibly cinematic, but it really makes me wonder what was cropped out. I try to imagine sitting down to eat in a dining room, chewing on a lamb chop and washing it down with a glass of red wine while having Saturn devour his child over my shoulder. With something so decontextualized, much is lost.

Some notes on museum cruising.

There are the occasional cute boys that wander through, accompanied by a friend or with an audio guide pressed to their ear. Some with bodies to rival the semi-naked St. John the Baptist, decked out in tight-fitting T-shirts and jeans instead of a fur loincloth. They hardly make eye contact here, unlike the stares I remember in the museums in Latin America. Their eyes flit about the room, from painting to wall text and then they wander away.

Is it because I'm older, having reached the age of invisibility? Is it because I don't appear to be an exotic other, instead blending in with the Iberian-Caucasoid masses? Perhaps the language barrier is too much to overcome. Perhaps they already came.

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