The exhibition surveys portraiture in Spain through eleven brilliant examples from the collection of the Museo del Prado which are on view at the Musée Ingres in Montauban. The show introduces visitors to this genre – one of the best represented in the museum’s collection – which followed an absolutely unique tradition unrelated to that of France, though in the nineteenth century it approached the oeuvre of Ingres, especially through Federico de Madrazo, the most ‘Ingresque’ of the Spanish painters, two of whose works are on show.
Structured chronologically, it begins with one of the most intense and original sixteenth-century portraitists, El Greco, and continues with several examples of court portraiture in the times of the first Habsburgs. The genre’s height of splendour is represented by the portrait of Mary of Austria, Queen of Hungary by Diego Velázquez, which is intensely human and an example of the artistic tastes of the court of Philip IV. The show is also notable for one of the most unsettling portraits in the Prado’s collection: that of Eugenia Martínez Vallejo by Carreño, the greatest painter of portraits of the hombres de placer (entertainers) who were under the protection of Charles II and were immortalised by the king’s most influential court painters.
The new century brought the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish throne, resulting in new customs in portraiture and a new taste for artists of European repute, among them the Bohemian Anton Raphael Mengs, who set the new standards of academic classicism. But the greatest artistic impetus of the entire eighteenth century is represented in the exhibition by Goya’s Portrait of General Ricardos, which expresses the essence of the Enlightenment and at the same time reflects the human depth characteristic of the artist’s finest portraits. Vicente López was the most highly appreciated portraitist of the absolutist court of Ferdinand VII on account of his pleasing and flattering but highly expressive works..
The pair of portraits of the married couple Jaime Girona and his wife Saturnina Canaleta, both immortalised by Federico de Madrazo, reflects the most genuine traits of Spanish portraiture tradition within the international trends of Romanticism. They furthermore attest clearly to the influence of Ingres’s models in Spain, an aspect of particular interest to the host venue.
The show ends with an iconic image from the Spanish painting collection, the portrait of María Figueroa Dressed as a Menina by Joaquín Sorolla, a conscious reflection on Spanish painting of the past and on the consideration of Velázquez as an ideal master of the notion of realism at the dawn of the twentieth century through one of the best established icons of Spanish art.
Structured chronologically, it begins with one of the most intense and original sixteenth-century portraitists, El Greco, and continues with several examples of court portraiture in the times of the first Habsburgs. The genre’s height of splendour is represented by the portrait of Mary of Austria, Queen of Hungary by Diego Velázquez, which is intensely human and an example of the artistic tastes of the court of Philip IV. The show is also notable for one of the most unsettling portraits in the Prado’s collection: that of Eugenia Martínez Vallejo by Carreño, the greatest painter of portraits of the hombres de placer (entertainers) who were under the protection of Charles II and were immortalised by the king’s most influential court painters.
The new century brought the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish throne, resulting in new customs in portraiture and a new taste for artists of European repute, among them the Bohemian Anton Raphael Mengs, who set the new standards of academic classicism. But the greatest artistic impetus of the entire eighteenth century is represented in the exhibition by Goya’s Portrait of General Ricardos, which expresses the essence of the Enlightenment and at the same time reflects the human depth characteristic of the artist’s finest portraits. Vicente López was the most highly appreciated portraitist of the absolutist court of Ferdinand VII on account of his pleasing and flattering but highly expressive works..
The pair of portraits of the married couple Jaime Girona and his wife Saturnina Canaleta, both immortalised by Federico de Madrazo, reflects the most genuine traits of Spanish portraiture tradition within the international trends of Romanticism. They furthermore attest clearly to the influence of Ingres’s models in Spain, an aspect of particular interest to the host venue.
The show ends with an iconic image from the Spanish painting collection, the portrait of María Figueroa Dressed as a Menina by Joaquín Sorolla, a conscious reflection on Spanish painting of the past and on the consideration of Velázquez as an ideal master of the notion of realism at the dawn of the twentieth century through one of the best established icons of Spanish art.
