Spanish conquest
The MFA showcases one king's era in the powerful exhibit 'El Greco to Velazquez'
Poor Pious Philip. The King of Spain from 1598 to 1621, Philip III hasn't received a great deal of attention over the years. His father, Philip II, a warrior and defender of the empire and the Catholic faith, is better known. Philip III reigned during quieter times and didn't make much of a name for himself.
In Spanish art history, the time of Philip III's reign has also been largely ignored - written off as the period between El Greco (the Greek-born Domenikos Theotokopoulos) and Diego Velazquez, two pivotal masters of Spanish painting. El Greco died in his 70s in 1614, when Velazquez, born in 1599, was still a pup. Velazquez grew up to be the royal painter of Philip IV.
"El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III" at the Museum of Fine Arts dramatically plunges into this gap and reveals a treasure trove of previously unsung artists. Their work hangs alongside brilliant canvases by El Greco and Velazquez, offering a vivid, often passionate picture of Spain at the dawn of the 17th century.
The seeds of this exhibition were planted more than 20 years ago, when co-curator Sarah Schroth of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University unearthed an inventory of goods owned by Philip III's right-hand man, the Duke of Lerma. The list included more than 2,000 paintings, including a majestic portrait of the duke painted by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens while on a diplomatic mis sion to the Spanish court in 1603. On view here, it's the only painting by a non-Spaniard in the show.
The list proved that Philip III's Spain offered more cultural riches than historians had suspected, with artists navigating styles ranging from the expressionistic El Greco to Velazquez, known for his nuanced realism.
El Greco painted in Toledo right up until his death. Schroth and her co-curator, the MFA's Ronni Baer, have devoted the first gallery to his late paintings. They are showstoppers.
El Greco's nervously lively brushwork, his elongated figures, and his playfulness with space produce work both romantic and fraught; many images look as if they could have come from a fever dream. For his undated "View of Toledo," a brilliant, roiling landscape, El Greco cut out half of the city and moved the cathedral from one side of town to the other. He limned the buildings with sunlight against dramatic dark clouds.
Toledo, about 45 miles from the capital in Madrid, was a cultural hotbed and a backdrop to several of El Greco's paintings, such as "Laocoön" (about 1610-1614), in which he captures the death of the Trojan priest who warned his countrymen of Greeks bearing gifts. Here sea serpents have come aground and attack Laocoön and his sons. The silken flesh of the figures appears sculpted from shadows and ghostly light. The painting whorls in a dizzying circular composition, accentuated by the arc of one son's body holding a snake at bay, like a hoop in the air.
A deepening mysticism marked El Greco's last years, imbuing his paintings with an otherworldliness. His splendid portrait of the orator, preacher, and poet Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino (1609), from the MFA's collection, draws the man as piercing and haunted.
El Greco's portraits bristle with energy and the suggestion of an inner life. In contrast, look at Juan Pantoja de la Cruz's "King Philip III of Spain" (about 1601-02), which depicts the king as a symbol, not a person. When strife arose, Philip III practiced diplomacy. Here this peacemaker points toward a battlefield, his face masklike, his exquisitely rendered armor gleaming.
Across from the king hangs the first Velazquez in the exhibit, a portrait of the poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (1622), from the MFA's collection. Arresting in its frank naturalism, it shows the sad eyes and downturned mouth of a bitter man; compared to the image of the king, this portrait startles with its nakedness. Throughout the show, each appearance of a Velazquez thrusts the viewer into a deeper appraisal of the humanity of his subjects.
Painting nobility required restraint, whereas religious canvases called for artists to pour out the passion of their faith. And in many ways, the fervent Catholicism of the time fuels this exhibit. Catholic mysticism was on the rise; the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila was beatified and then canonized during Philip III's reign. Philip II had espoused a devout but buttoned-down style of worship. Under his son, expressions of faith - at least on canvas - grew more passionate and personal.
El Greco's masterpiece "The Annunciation" (1596-1600) is theatrical and imposing at more than 10 feet high. An angelic orchestra plays then-contemporary instruments at the top of the painting, traditionally the site of an apparition of God (Philip III had recently allowed such instruments to be played during Mass). A white-burning bush, rather than a pot of lilies, sits at Mary's feet, symbol of a faith not just pure but heated.
In religious-themed work, the progression from El Greco's haunted, ethereal figures to Velazquez's more earthly ones can be traced in part to the influence of Italian artists, particularly Caravaggio. Juan Bautista Maino's large, crisp, and gorgeous "Adoration of the Magi" (1612) reflects that influence - he spent time in Rome. He probably used real-life models, as Caravaggio did, here sumptuously draped in colorful fabrics. Luis Tristán's "Adoration of the Shepherds" (1620) nods more directly to El Greco, who was his teacher, with slightly elongated figures and flickering light, but like Maino he has added weight, volume, and precision brushwork, reminiscent of Caravaggio.
A charming group of paintings of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception shows the deepening naturalism of the time, of which Velazquez became the maestro. Francisco Pacheco, Velazquez's teacher and a defender of Catholic orthodoxy in art, wrote that Mary should be depicted as "a woman who was clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars."
Several versions here stick to that formula - most rigidly, Juan Sánchez Cotán's 1617-18 canvas, in which he traps a prim Mary in a bubbling aura of light. In 1619, Pacheco put her in the air, surrounded by chubby-cheeked cherubs. Both figures are blandly idealized compared to the one Velazquez painted around the same time, at the age of 19 or 20. His Mary looks like an ordinary girl, with a weak chin and wide-set eyes. The sun haloes her, as it would anyone standing in its way. Although still positioned in the heavens, this was someone a viewer could better relate to.
El Greco and Velazquez both painted "Apostolado," 13 canvases portraying Christ and the 12 apostles. Within this tradition, El Greco innovated by stressing the individuality of each man, using techniques from portraiture rather than relying on symbolic attributes to signal the subject, as painters had in the past. He set "Saint James (Santiago el Mayor)" (about 1610-1614) in a three-quarter length portrait format. Wide dark eyes, a narrow face, and an open hand convey the saint's kind heart and sensitivity.
Velazquez's "Apostle Thomas" (1622) pushes the subject's humanity even further: We know it's a portrait of a man playing Thomas; the model had appeared in earlier works. We see him in profile, with his brow furrowed and his mouth open, looking worn and more fleshly than El Greco's Saint James.
The exhibit ends quietly, with still lifes and tavern paintings. It's a lovely, contemplative coda for a show filled with such passion. Still lifes came into vogue around 1600. Juan Sanchez Cotán, who painted such a stiff Mary, turns out to have had a finer hand with these. His striking "Still Life With Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber" (1600) looks almost 21st-century, with the quince and cabbage hanging on strings, creating a descending arc of produce moving toward the viewer in a window against a sheer black ground.
The final painting, Velazquez's 1618 work "An Old Woman Cooking Eggs," has still-life elements, with plates and cutlery at hand, but its humble force comes in the deft characterizations of the fine-featured old woman and the stout boy at her side - she wise and steely, he respectful. This type of genre painting, depicting humble places such as kitchens and inns, dates back to the Greeks, but Velazquez reinvigorated it in 17th-century Spain with the vitality of his naturalism.
Works by Velazquez and El Greco can be seen throughout the exhibition, like golden threads glinting in an ornate tapestry. Putting these two geniuses in context with their contemporaries charts a fascinating progression. Some painters here hold to the tradition of portraying icons as types. El Greco portrayed them as individuals. Velazquez drew ordinary men and women as compelling as any religious or mythic figure, full of drama and mystery. 