Some reflections on El Prado

For our last day in Europe Mary mustered up the strength to visit El Prado, which was (by no means coincidentally) quite close to our hotel. We spent 3-4 hours there.

Of course in museums of this size you really just have to graze and take what you can get. They are too big to try to take it all in. Like good tourists we tried to visit with the greatest hits (Velazquez, Goya, etc) but also were drawn in by other stuff. I hadn't been there since '88 so it was pretty striking to see just how much distance was traveled by Goya. The Black Paintings are so strikingly proto-modern, unlike anything else to come for 80-100 years. I'm not saying anything new of course, but it was striking. 

I was in particular taken by these portraits by de Ribera of Heraclitus and Democritus. In all of my years I don't think I've ever seen an artist try to render the pre-Socratic philosophers. Sure they are anachronistic, but what are you gonna do. Apparently he's also got a Protagoras somewhere, as well as a Plato and an Aristotle.

Heraclitus (a personal fave)

Democritus (forgive poor quality, technically I was breaking the rules by shooting these even without flash but I was able to avoid the gaze of the only somewhat vigilant guards).

We also took the time to go up to the corner in the 3rd floor where the floor plan said the museum's Rembrandt was found. Indeed, there was only one, but it was an interesting one, portraying Judith with the head of Holofernes on a plate. This was pretty striking, because most Renaissance painters seem to focus on very little Old Testament material outside of Adam and Eve. Moreover, the Judith/Holofernes episode actually comes from the Apocrypha, not the canonical Old Testament, though the canon was of course shifting around a lot.

There was also a passing reference in another Dutch painting of the iconoclastic habits of early Dutch Protestants, i.e. they were actually destroying art. Physical iconoclasm a la the Taliban isn't something I had thought about a ton as a component of European history, though Anna had also mentioned how a chateau she and the family had visited in Brittany had been destroyed by French Revolutionaries, presumably Jacobins, and what a bummer that was. 

Much to ponder.