Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
It’s impossible to separate the work of Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) from his relationship with King Philip IV. Philip wrote letters of introduction so that Velázquez could go to study painting in Italy, which had no small part in developing his sense of color, composition and melodrama. The painter came to feel so close to the king that he even painted himself in his portrait of his daughter, Las Meninas (1656), which is probably Spain’s greatest painting. It’s a lesson to us all about how easy life can be if you cozy up to the boss, and perhaps a helpful tip to King Charles III, who might have received a better official portrait if his own court painter didn’t so obviously despise him.
The work of Velázquez recently went on view at the Blanton Museum of Art in “Spirit & Splendor: El Greco, Velázquez, and the Hispanic Baroque,” which brings together the work of those two Spanish greats alongside Francisco de Zurbarán and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. These paintings are paired with those of Latin American artists like Luis Juárez, Baltasar de Echave Ibía, José de Páez and Melchor Pérez Holguín. Across two centuries and 57 pieces from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York City, the works on show demonstrate how Spanish painting came to be translated for the Americas, and the debt the medium as a whole owes to the Iberian Peninsula’s intense version of Baroque.
There is almost too much to enjoy here, especially if you’re the kind of person who lectures those planning a trip to Madrid that at least two, perhaps three days should be allocated for the Prado. Velázquez’s Portrait of a Little Girl (c.1648-1652) offers a nice contrast to his depiction of the Infanta Margarita Teresa, and is one of only two portraits Velázquez made of non-royal children. Where the princess has white blonde hair and rosy cheeks, a mature and bemused smile at the corner of her mouth, this dark-haired little girl seems wary. They’re even facing opposite directions.
El Greco’s Pietà (c.1574-1576) feels like a similarly democratic gesture. You can really feel the weight of Christ’s body as it is lifted by Mary and two female mourners. All three struggle, bearing bold blue sashes that contrast the dead man’s pallor. Mary’s anguish is pretty awful if you choose to look at it: her face at the same level as the crosses on Golgotha. These are El Greco style, of course, ever long and extra severe.
We turn to Mexico to bring back the glamour. The Wedding at Cana (1696) by Nicolás Correa uses a shimmering mother-of-pearl, a merger of European elegance with New World craft traditions. Two people boast actual halos, but everyone seems to be glowing—
“Spirit & Splendor: El Greco, Velázquez, and the Hispanic Baroque” is on view at Blanton Museum of Art through February 1, 2025.
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