‘That’s where you think they are. Come inside and see.’ He led
me to a crawl space under the roof and showed me how the
vaulted ceiling of the old museum had been left intact, as had the
roof on which we had been standing, but between them had been
inserted a steel-and-concrete shell nearly a foot thick and invisible
from either within or without. The old vertical walls had also been
left as they were, and the exhibition walls on which the pictures
were hung, but between them new walls of steel and concrete had
been inserted.
‘We never closed the museum one day,’ Murguruza said.
‘Working quietly, where no one could see us, we built a concrete
cocoon which encloses every area. We have made the museum
as fireproof and as burglarproof as possible, because you can’t
get into it without penetrating this cocoon.’
I could scarcely believe that this transformation had taken place
during the years that I had known the Prado. How had the massive
girders and tons of concrete been slipped into position? ‘We were
satisfied to work slowly,’ Muguruza said. He jumped up and down
on one of the mammoth concrete vaults and asked, ‘What do you
suppose is below us right now?’ I didn’t know, and he said, ‘Room
XII,’ and I visualized that finest single room of the world’s
museums, a room whose twenty-six paintings represented one
of the chief treasures of history.
‘Jump up and down on it,’ Dr. Muguruza cried, and I did so.
The concrete shell did not even reverberate, but I felt
uncomfortable jumping on top of Room XII of the Prado.
When I climbed down from the roof and studied the museum
from street level I could find no mark that betrayed its renovation,
and I reflected that much of modern Spain was like this, heavily
reconstructed but with few external marks showing, because the
comfortable old appearances had been retained.
How good is the Prado collection? Because of the personal
manner in which it was assembled, it has to be uneven. Since the
kings of Spain considered Dutch painting plebeian because it
portrayed scenes of everyday life, the Prado has practically no
Dutch school, and since they cared little for English painting,
none were there until a few years ago when a New Yorker who
had grown to love the museum unexpectedly gave a Gainsborough
and a Lawrence, which look quite out of place. The French school
is poorly represented, with no moderns at all, and several of the
major Italian schools are ignored. In comprehensiveness the Prado
does not begin to compare with great collections like those in the
national galleries of London and Washington.
But where it is strong, it has no equal. Thanks to Carlos and
Felipe it has the world’s top collection of Titians. One room alone
contains sixteen prime works by the Venetian, a staggering
collection of portraits, religious subjects and nudes. As if that
were not enough, in the next room hang eleven more, each good
enough to be a major item in an ordinary museum, and in the
storeroom hide an additional dozen!
Equally rich is the Rubens collection. In room after room the
visitor finds those choice canvases crowded with nudes with which
he has been familiar for years without realizing that they were all
in Madrid.
That we can still enjoy these nudes of Titian and Rubens is
something of a miracle, for although they were among the
favorites of the early kings, by the later they were judged
scandalous, and toward the end of the eighteenth century were
condemned to be burned. Plans were made to destroy every nude
in the collection, but in 1792 a group of men, at considerable risk
to themselves, hid the offending pictures in a back room of a lesser
museum, where they stayed unseen for more than thirty years
until it was safe to bring them forth again.
The museum contains many Italian masterpieces. Raphael’s
(1483-1570) ‘Portrait of an Unidentified Cardinal’ is here, staring
at us coldly from beneath his red hat; scholars have suggested
seven different churchmen as the possible sitter, but he remains
a mystery. Here also is Paolo Veronese’s (1528-1588) radiant little
jewel, ‘The Finding of Moses,’ probably the best painting this
polished artist ever did.
My favorite among the Italians is Correggio’s (1494-1534)
exquisite ‘Noli Me Tangere’ (Touch Me Not), about as fine a work
as the late Italian school produced, for the figure of Christ with
arms extended has the quality of supreme religious painting, while
the Magdalene in her rich brocade represents humanity at its
most enchanting. The landscape, showing as it does the hour of
dawn, is faultlessly done and all parts combine to make a most
gratifying work.
One of the surprise of the Prado is a series of small rooms on
the second floor, so unpretentious that many visitors miss them.
Here are displayed the Flemish and German paintings collected
by Felipe II and his contemporaries, and to understand the work
of these schools one simply must visit the Prado. Two works
easiest to grasp are the powerful self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer
(1471-1528) and the exquisite little blue painting by Gerald David
(c. 1450-1523) showing the Holy Family resting on its way to
Egypt. It is one of the purest of paintings, a jewel perfect in all
parts.
The picture here that no one should miss is, of course,
Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Delights,’ in which the precursor
of surrealism presents a teeming canvas flanked by two wings in
which the delights of sensuality are portrayed with heavy but not
offensive emphasis on sex. The central panel is divided into three
parts: at the top a lake on which fantastic pleasure boats appear
and over whose rivers nightmare bridges rise; in the middle a pool
in which lovers swim and around which ecstatic couples parade
on all kinds of beasts, including unicorns, griffins and camels; at
the bottom a bewildering maze of persons engaged in various
delights, such as lovers entrapped in a giant clamshell, dancers
whose heads unite to form an owl and a pair surrounded by an
evanescent soap bubble.
The curious thing about the ‘Garden of Delights’ is that it was
a favorite picture of Felipe II, and we know that it occupied a
place of honor in his palace, but this particular Bosch is only one
of several in the Prado, for the more the men of Felipe’s time
brooded over religious matters, the more they appreciated these
lusty pictures from the north.
The most important picture in the Flemish section, however
is of quite a different kind. Many critics have held it to be one of
the four or five most significant paintings in the world, and I
know two experts who deem it the best canvas ever painted. It is
of particular interest to anyone visiting the Prado, for it illustrates
better than words can explain the peculiar quality of this
collection.
Early in his life Felipe II heard that in a small chapel in Louvain,
dedicated to the Confraternity of Crossbowmen, there stood an
altarpiece by Roger van der Weyden (1400?-1464) depicting the
body of Christ being lowered from the cross. Visitors familiar
with the marvelous painting reported to Felipe, ‘It is the greatest
of the north.’ In vain the king tried to buy it, and when this proved
impossible he sent a court painter to copy it, and with the copy
he was content for several decades. Later his aunt, the Queen of
Hungary, succeeded in acquiring the painting for her collection,
and remembering how much her nephew desired it, gave it to
him as a present.
In the depiction of the ten differentiated figures, in their
placement, in the use of color, design and space, and above all in
the symbolization of religious emotion, this marvelous stark
painting is one of the major accomplishments of western culture.
The best painting in the world? That is too strong. One of the
four or five best? Without question.
The lasting story of the Prado lies, however, not in these
importations from foreign lands but in paintings from the Spanish
school. In this field the Prado has no equal or even any close
competitor.
Leave the Flemish rooms and walk down the long corridor
housing the works of the Spanish school, and see for yourself the
incredible richness of this collection. To take only one example,
near the rotunda you will find not one elegant Murillo
(1617-1682), ‘Immaculate Conception,’ with Mary, surrounded
by angels, standing on the defeated crescent of Islam, but three
separate versions. The third and finest has a strange history: when
Napoleon conquered Spain in 1808 to place his brother Joseph
on the throne, his general in command of the invasion, Marshal
Soult, packed up this Murillo and hauled it back to Paris with
him, where it found a home in the Louvre. More than a hundred
years later, in 1941, the Franco government in Spain arranged a
deal with the Vichy government in France whereby the Soult
Murillo was returned to Madrid in exchange for a Velázquez
which went to the Louvre, whereupon certain Spanish art critics
said, ‘To trade a Velázquez for a third copy of a Murillo! We
Spaniards must be crazy!’ A kinder judgment would be that the
Soult Madonna is superior to the other two versions, and to have
three such Murillos together in one spot, while other museums
have none, demonstrates how lucky the Prado is where Spanish
painting is concerned.
Leading off from the Murillos is the long, specially lighted room
on whose ceiling I had been jumping. It is known simply as Room
XII and has no equal in other museums. Many travelers who
schedule their trips so as to see the Prado come only to see this
room.
It contains twenty-six paintings by Velázquez, works so varied
and magnificent that of themselves they comprise a museum.
One Spanish guidebook says bluntly, ‘In this room and those
nearby hang all the best Velázquez paintings in existence.’
Certainly, if one wants to understand this master he must come
to Room XII.
I have spent so many hours here that they must add up to days
or even weeks, and even yet I don’t know how to view it properly.
First, of course, one looks at the huge ‘Lancers’ on the end wall,
a painting, like Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ in Amsterdam, so
complete that one either perceives its majesty at once or misses
it. Words cannot help. There it is, a mammoth canvas overflowing
with vitality and perfection, and some people are content to spend
their time with it, ignoring the other paintings.
I prefer, however, that series of three powerful canvases in
which Velázquez portrays ordinary Spanish life: the weavers, the
blacksmiths, the winebibbers. Any one of these paintings, given
a room to itself in some museum in London or New York, would
be the gem of the collection, but in Room XII it is merely one
among twenty-six.
Most visitors to the Velázquez room stand a long time before
the two portraits of a young prince named Baltasar Carlos, for
these are two of the most engaging and tragic child portraits ever
painted. They are engaging because in the first we see him at the
age of four or five, dressed as a knight astride a pudgy brown pony
set in an idealized landscape. In the second we see him at the age
of six—the canvas tells us that was his age—posing as a hunter,
cap awry, attended by two brilliantly painted dogs.
The pictures are tragic because of what happened to Baltasar
Carlos. The son of Felipe IV, he was a handsome child, apparently
intelligent, and Spain was relieved to know that the throne one
day would pass into his hands. As he matured he became even
more attractive, and Velázquez painted him at various ages,
showing him finally as a young fellow of sober bearing with a
conspicuous Habsburg chin, but from fifteen on, the young heir
fell into debauchery, from which at seventeen he died. The throne
passed into the hands of his near-idiot half brother, whom we
saw at the auto-da-fé of 1680, Carlos the Bewitched, and the
Spanish Habsburgs were doomed.
Women visitors to Room XII linger before the graceful portrait
of a little girl, Velázquez’s personal favorite, the Princess
Margarita, who would grow up to marry the Emperor of Austria.
Velázquez painted her many times; several European museums
contain versions showing her standing in extremely wide dresses
made of lace and satin, and in a moment we shall see that his
masterwork also focused on her. By all accounts the little princess
was a charmer who matured into a responsible empress, but like
her brother Baltasar Carlos, she died prematurely, at the age of
twenty-two. That Velázquez loved her strange mixture of imperial
dignity and childish charm there can be no doubt.
Some years ago a group of art experts in Florence became
irritated by the publicity given the fact that Rembrandt’s ‘Aristotle
Contemplating the Bust of Homer’ had sold for $2,300,000, and
they issued a statement estimating that the famous first room of
the Uffizi, with its three versions of the Virgin enthroned by
Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto, would bring $25,000,000 if offered
at auction. What would the contents of the Prado Room XII bring?
For the ‘Lancers’ I suppose a bid of $5,000,000 would be only an
opener. For any one of the three genre scenes the price would
have to be around four or five million. For the great portraits? I
suppose the final figure for the room would be well above
$80,000,000, which was one reason why I was somewhat
apprehensive about jumping on it.
In an isolated room not far from Room XII hangs in solitary
majesty a Velázquez which has attracted attention since the day
it was finished. On a special plaque set into the wall nearby, the
curators of the Prado describe it as ‘The culminating work of
universal painting.’ It is ‘Las Meninas’ (The Maids of Honor) and
it unfolds on many planes, one behind the other. Six conspicuous
ones are, first, a lifelike dog; second, little Princess Margarita
attended by her maids of honor and a well-known dwarf; third,
Velázquez standing back from his easel on which he is painting
a picture which we cannot see; fourth, a man and woman
observing the scene; fifth, a wall containing a mirror in which we
see that Velázquez is painting the portrait of Margarita’s father
and mother, Felipe IV and Queen Mariana; sixth, seen through
a doorway, a flight of stairs up which a chamberlain is walking.