El Greco to Velázquez: An Overview
Art During the Reign of Philip III at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Spanish painting, sculpture and the decorative arts are explored in "El Greco to Velázquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
El Greco to Velázquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (April 20-July 27, 2008) investigates flourishing painting, sculpture and courtly culture during the peaceful rule of the Spanish monarch in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries. Presented majestically in the museum's spacious second-floor Gund Gallery, the international loan exhibition travels next to Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina (August 21-November 9, 2008).
Art and Culture in Philip III's Spain
Historians describe the Pax Hispanica as the 23 years from 1598 to 1621 when Spain's political ascendancy in Europe was achieved by a peaceful means of foreign diplomacy and the cessation of hostilities with France (1598), England (1604) and the Spanish Netherlands (1609). This same period coincided with the monarchy of Philip III. It was during his reign that the austere kind of art favored by his father Philip II (r. 1556-1598) gave way to naturalism in painting, polychromy and realism in sculpture and the humanization of saintly figures in emotionally expressive religious compositions.
The Exhibition
Some 100 works of art in El Greco to Velázquez... are arranged chronologically and by theme:
- Late El Greco;
- Portraiture;
- Religion and the Court;
- Still Life; and
- the Duke of Lerma's "Camarin."
El Greco
The MFA, Boston's presentation begins with works from the late career of Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614), the remarkable Cretan painter and sculptor known to posterity as El Greco. Six of 11 oil on canvas paintings by the master introduce the viewer to the cultural landscape of Philip III's Spain, a world dominated by courtly splendor and indulgence, sumptuous celebrations, architectural campaigns, spiritual fervor, Counter-Reformation Catholicism and the religiously repressive Inquisition.
El Greco's luminous View of Toledo, on loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a captivating vista of the artist's adopted city. Here the visionary painter exercised artistic license, having seen fit to reposition its cathedral to the left of the 14th-century Alcázar Palace in one of Western art's most breathtaking landscapes.
Still Life Painting and the Duke of Lerma's Camarin
Artists usually relegated to the realm of specialists are liberated from the annals of art history and shine prominently in this exhibition of Spanish Golden Age art. Many were exceptional in the art of still life painting, some influenced in part by the graphically realistic works of Italian renegade Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). An important example in the exhibition, noteworthy for its dramatic use of lighting, is Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (ca. 1600) by Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627), an artist who excelled in oil painting during the young Philip III's reign.
While the exhibition exudes devotional Christian painting and sculpture, a healthy dose of secular works balances its presentation. On display are lustrous wonders of glass exhibited in the recreated camarin or cabinet of curiosities that belonged to the Duke of Lerma, his portrait by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) also on display. Such collections of European, Asian and Native American artifacts, most notably in Dresden, Germany, were all the rage of Late Renaissance and Baroque royals and aristocrats.
Diego Velázquez
The show concludes with seven works by the precocious court painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), the most riveting of which is An Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618). The finely chiseled facial features of the aged matron, contrasted with those of a young man, reveal a sense of naturalism not seen in Spanish painting until the age of King Philip III. The vivid genre compositions of Velázquez incorporated elements of still life painting as seen in the haggered female's eggs frying in oil.
Sources:
- Baer, Ronni, Sarah Schroth (eds.), et al. El Greco to Velázquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III (exh. cat.). Boston: MFA Publications, 2008.
- Carr, Dawson W., et al. Velázquez (exh. cat.). London: National Gallery Company, 2006.
- Davies, David. El Greco (exh. cat.). London: National Gallery Company, 2003.
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