the return of Velázquez, El Greco and Goya

The deep-rooted feeling of belonging to our historical heritage is evident, with the massive turnout of the public, always at the Prado Museum works recovered, albeit temporarily, brought from foreign collections by those we consider our painting masters. However, it was not always like this.

Just over a century ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, with almost no legislation on the protection of national heritage, in a complex political period and without private collectors with sufficient vocation and, above all, economic power in the face of American tycoons, Striking pieces by our masters left Spain to enter private collectionsembryos of the great American encyclopedic museums and small but dense private museums such as The Frick Collection in New York, from where, thanks to renovations in its building, nine first-quality canvases now arrive at the Museo del Prado.

This migration of crucial works in art history from the early Renaissance to the avant-garde affected all of Europe and, in most cases, was determined by the capitalist and Protestant ideology of its beneficiaries. What determined, for example, his disinterest in the tradition of religious painting in favor of genre scenes from everyday life Central European and French taste.

[Felipe IV reunites with his buffoon three times later: the greatest works that arrive at the Museo del Prado]

The “distinction” (in terms of bourdieu) that was intended to be achieved with this cultural “laundering” of fortunes accumulated in poor industrial conditions, such as Frick, was also reflected in the little interest in erotic representations of mythologies and allegories against the English and German landscapes. On the other hand, the portrait genre remained unscathed, with those great men to whose genealogy it was ultimately intended to belong. And this explains why most of the works loaned on this occasion are precisely portraits.

Another consequence of acquisitions for American families Morgan, gardener, Mellon, Lehmann, Huntington, havemeyer and others, it was to consolidate the canon that had been emerging throughout the 19th century.

Of the three Goyaesque portraits, the 'Portrait of a Woman‘carried out in 1824, the year in which Goya would leave Spain to settle first in Paris and, definitively, in Bordeaux

Apart from Murillo and the well-established goya In modernity, for the canon of Spanish painting, the interest of French artists in Velázquez, that something had been forgotten. Just as, in the case of The Greekthe retrospective carried out in 1902. Thus, although Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) was not a lover like Huntington of Spanish culture, in almost a decade (1905-1914) managed to bring together four Goyas, three Grecos, a Velázquez and a Murillo, among the 130 pieces that complete a collection that counts, for example, with no less than three Vermeer.

In this exhibition, in an attempt to cover the smallest number of works, just nine, with their unique excellence, the right choice was made to incorporate them into the museum tour, in room XVI, next to Velázquez and Murillo. Almost as if they were his own works, proposing interesting dialogues with others in the collection.

Starting with the chronology and also with the exceptional theme, don't miss the small Expulsion of merchants from the Temple, H. 1600, a much sought-after iconography by the painter that he made before and after arriving in Spain, and which would have a possible pendant in the version that can be found today in the Madrid church of San Ginés.

Just like the vigorous full-length portrait of Vicenzo Anastagi, H. 1575, Knight of the Order of Malta. Furthermore, it is interesting to compare the Saint Geronimo from the Frick collection and the portrait of a doctor (the doctor Rodrigo de la Fuente), both treated with psychological viewalthough the representation of the saint is more stylized, elongated.

On the side of Felipe IV in Fraga the portrait of the buffoon has been collected El cousin, because both are dated the same year, 1614, and were made on the same quality of cloth. However, in this case, there is a little left, compared to the magnificent representation of the king, whose gaze goes further than the topical distance of the official portraits, as occurs in other Velazqueño portraits (at its extreme, the Pope Inocencio), which, in itself, would deserve a visit. Much less favored sell Murillo with his student Self-portrait baroque next to the portrait of a flamenco merchant Nicolas Omazur established in Seville belonging to Prado: I was never his gender.

[El Museo del Prado recovers the first post at the Observatorio de la Cultura]

And finally, Goya, always. Presiding over this small room, the screen Forge, H. 1815-20, meets the highest expectations of this visit. Posed from a point of view that endows the figures with monumentality, as already occurred in paintings prior to this one, The pencil sharpener It is the water carrier (today in the Szepmuveszeti Múzeum of Budapest), shares with them a style close to black paintings, with expressive brushwork and strong chromatic contrasts: here, in the center of the scene, the red of the frame next to the white of his shirt main character.

As for the three Goyaesque portraits, also from the last period, the portrait of woman, made in 1824, the year in which Goya would leave Spain to settle first in Paris and, definitively, in Bordeaux, where he would make several portraits. The least rigid, natural and austere, but with Velázquez's details, is this woman standing, posing, but waving her hands, with her thoughts far from the painter's studio. Anyone would say this portrait could have been signed Manetwho copied so much! Goya, precursor of modernity, always surprises us. Goya, infinite, always.

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