Photo courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York
Wedding at Cana by Nicolás de Correa - Detail
Nicolás de Correa (Mexican, 1690–1700), The Wedding at Cana, 1696. H 58.8 x W 75.5 x D 6 cm. Oil and mixed media on wood panel inlaid with mother-of-pearl (nácar). Detail.
Spain was the world’s superpower in the 1500 and 1600s, a colossus astride four continents and rich from the gold of the New World. Spain’s wealth provided opportunities for artists to find patrons and its reach gave them options for immigration as Spanish spread culture across the globe.
“The Brilliance of the Spanish World: El Greco, Velázques, Zubarán,” the Milwaukee Art Museum’s new exhibition, is nearly as wide in scope as the empire it represents. Developed by MAM with New York’s Hispanic Society Museum and Library, “The Brilliance of the Spanish World” includes the unfamiliar as well as the familiar. Curator Tanya Paul concedes that several artists in the exhibit were previously unknown to her. Many works are Baroque, the house style of the Spanish Empire, yet, as Paul says, “We found room on either end of the timeline. We want to tell a more expansive story, including recognized artists and masterpieces while at the same time broadening the narrative.”
The presence of El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) in Spain begins to complicate the narrative. Born in Crete and trained in Eastern Orthodox iconography, he traveled west to Venice and then to Rome before settling in Spain. He was a 16th century counterpart to the creative cosmopolitans of our time, transmuting the influences he encountered into a style dramatically different from his contemporaries. Like a Greek iconographer, El Greco was less concerned with naturalistic representations than suggesting dimensions beyond the visible world. He achieved this through elongations that inspired Expressionism three centuries on. In his Saint Luke (c. 1590), the gospel author’s long fingers are much like the protracted pen they hold; the book he wrote almost free floats in the foreground.
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The features of Jesus and his followers in Supper in the House of Simon (c. 1620) are alive but boiled down to essentials. A sense of place is established through key objects but inessentials that might distract the eye from story are eliminated. The horror on Mary’s face in Pieta (c. 1575) is a scream stifled in paint as Joseph and Nicodemus carry away the body of her dead son Jesus. Behind them stand three spindly crosses on a desolate hill. The sky is grey, the ground is parched as if nature had recoiled in the face of the crucifixion.
By contrast, Diego Velázques was concerned with detailed, factual representation. His portrait of Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivarei (c. 1625) looms nearly as tall as the man he painted. The Duke appears entirely satisfied with his accomplishments; his keen appraising eyes gaze above a luxuriant mustache in an expression that stays short of menace while insinuating that he’s not to be crossed. Velázques also painted more intimately and on much smaller scale with Portrait of a Young Girl (c. 1645), whose unsentimentalized, anonymous subject looks out at the world with innocence.
Francisco de Zubarán specialized in female saints who often gazed imploringly heavenward. Quietly grotesque, his Saint Lucy (c. 1635) requires a close look and the back story. What are those two orbs in the gun metal bowl she holds in her hands? The bilingual text panel relates a story that was familiar enough to Zubarán’s contemporaries that it needed no explanation. Lucy gouged out her own eyes rather than marry an unwanted husband.
Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York
The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception - Fray Alonso López de Herrera
Fray Alonso López de Herrera (Spanish, active in Mexico, 1580–after 1640), 'The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,' 1640. H 52.7 x W 38.7 cm. Oil on copper.
“The Brilliance of the Spanish World” contains work by many artists beyond the threesome in the exhibit’s title. Juan Carreno de Miranda’s Charles II, King of Spain (c. 1680) depicts a figure strangely effeminate under his suit of armor. With a pale face and red puckered lips, the monarch looked decidedly uncomfortable in his role. Court painter Juan Carreno de Miranda’s portrait of Don Bernabe de Ochosa de Chinchetru y. Fernandez de Zuniga (1669) could be the prototype for Hollywood villains in the motion picture age. The painting depicts a scowling man with ramrod posture, his hand reaching for the sword half-concealed in the folds of his black garments.
The Spain of those centuries was not a tolerant place. The Jews and Moors had been expelled and El Greco took care not to arouse interest from the Inquisition. And yet, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo painted a portrait of a formerly enslaved African (c. 1660), recently freed by his father-in-law, the better-remembered painter Velázques. An unknown Peruvian artist painted Jesus in the manger onto an oval metal disc carried in religious processions. Fray Alonso López de Herrera, a Dominican friar who immigrated to Mexico, painted Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (1640), whose romanticized images influenced the direction of Roman Catholic iconography in the New World.
“The Brilliance of the Spanish World: El Greco, Velázques, Zubarán” will be on display at the Milwaukee Art Museum through July 27.
