Material Witness

Lessons in Love in the Prado

How Madrid, and Velázquez, taught me to appreciate art

Room 30 of London’s National Gallery is hardly off the beaten track. From the Central Hall you wonder past Canaletto, take a left at Turner and then again at the 17^th Century Italians. It’s a matter of a minute and yet it always feels somewhat overlooked, far from the madding crowd.

And this is good, because tucked away in one corner of the National’s Spanish collection is the Rokeby Venus. There is a comfortable bench in front of her and one afternoon in March I take a seat and spend some time indulging myself in a growing obsession: the paintings of Diego Velázquez. I have him, and her, more or less to myself. It is heaven.

The Rokeby Venus, painted in 1647 is so named for the Durham country house in which it hung for most of the 19^th Century. It is London’s most celebrated Velázquez and his only surviving nude. Like many of his most acclaimed works there is both challenge and a sense of interaction with the world. The face of Venus, blurred and indistinct, stares into a mirror, not at herself but, like the infanta Margarita in Las Meninas, back at the painter and the viewer. I stay for half an hour but it could be longer. Velázquez invites lengthy contemplation. His portraits never display just a face, but an entire personality and life story.

Alongside Venus is Felipe IV, all Hapsburg chin and awkward nobility. I have mixed feelings about Felipe. His was a tough reign, managing foreign wars and domestic decline. The portraits of Velázquez, who was an important administrator in the court as well as its most celebrated artist, chart the King’s trajectory from youthful hope to tired disappointment. In her marvellous book “The Vanishing Man” the art critic Laura Cumming writes: “The greatest achievement of Philip’s life was to employ Velázquez.”

Without Felipe’s patronage, there may be no Velázquez. Equally, if the painter had spent less time counting beans for the King, we would have a far greater wealth of his work.

I found Velázquez, as so many do, in Madrid where he’s not hiding in a side room. Madrid is a city that opens even the most untrained and disinterested eye to art. I moved here a decade ago with little appreciation, but the museums are irresistible.

The Thyssen collection might be the world’s most accessible art history tour. I first went there to see Henry VIII, more in search of Hilary Mantel than Hans Holbein. I can never go to the Reina Sofía without stopping in on Dalí’s Young Woman in a Window. Sorolla’s house is a personal favourite. The watercolours of Valencia’s beaches are marvellous but his family paintings move the soul. Find someone who loves you as much as Sorolla loved his Clotilde.

And then there is the Prado, the jewel in Madrid’s crown. At first its scale and grandeur are intimidating. Where does one start in such a treasure trove?

Fortune intervened.  In early 2019, I was invited to a private tour and supper. A guide whisked us through Rubens, Bosch and Goya until we finally found ourselves in front of Las Meninas. There we dwelled a good long time learning something of Velázquez and his unique talent, and much about the painting, its meanings and its messages. And there I learned something of how to look, appreciate and love art. And I fell in love with Velázquez.

There’s no painting in the world that is harder to walk away from. And the longer you look at it, the harder it becomes because the painting looks back.   The piercing eyes of the Infanta; the quizzical face of the master himself; even Felipe in the mirror in the background. “The figures of the past keep looking into our moment,” writes Cumming. And I keep looking for Velázquez.

So four years later, I am in the National Gallery, with Felipe and Venus. On the way out, I stop to look at Goya’s Wellington, but the Duke doesn’t do it for me in the way that even Felipe does. Goya’s canvass is a portrait, a great one, but Velázquez tells a story. 

The Iron Duke, as it happens, had a couple of Velázquez canvasses of his own, found among other loot in the abandoned baggage train of Joseph Bonaparte after his defeat at the battle of Vitoria. As soon as he knew what he had – 83 canvasses stolen from the Spanish Crown – Wellington ordered them sent back to Ferdinand VII. The new King refused his offer.  And so my next trip is to Apsley House to spend time with The Water Seller of Sevilla, the Portrait of a Man. And Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, the genius hidden in plain sight.

This is the text of an article published in the British Spanish Society magazine, Revista. 

https://www.britishspanishsociety.org/la-revista/

 

REVIEW: The Vanishing Man by Laura Cumming

We live in an age of wonders. This afternoon, if I so chose, I could get on the bus and the Metro and within an hour be standing in front of Las Meninas, the masterpiece of the transcendent Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. 

I don't have time though as I'm writing this so instead I typed Las Meninas into Chrome, and looked at a digital representation of the canvass. If I wanted to look at it more often I can install it on my television screen for when I need relief from Babylon Berlin.

We, with our internet and our Ryanairs and Metros, take these things for granted, but they are modern miracles. From 1656 when it was painted until 1819 when the Prado opened, viewing Las Meninas was essentially restricted to the Princes and flunkeys of the Spanish court.

Even in the nineteenth century, you still needed to be able to get to Madrid to see the painting and you really had to want to come. Edouard Manet, the French modernist, did and in 1865 braved a cholera outbreak and a 36 hour train journey to make a pilgrimage to see the work of Velázquez. He didn’t much like Madrid, finding the food bad and life uncomfortable. But he loved the work of Velázquez, telling Baudelaire he was ‘the greatest painter there ever was’.

This story is just one of many in The Vanishing Man – In Pursuit of Velázquez, Laura Cumming’s thrilling book which tells the story of Velázquez himself and the tale of a 19^th Century Reading shopkeeper and his fight to prove he owned a lost work of the great master.

The Vanishing Man is an incredible feat of story-telling. It is entertaining, compelling and rich in detail, and Cumming writes beautifully about a subject that feels intensely personal to her. What is extraordinary, however, is the research and how the author has been able to do so much with so little. Hardly anything is known about the life of Velázquez. Contemporary accounts of his life are few, short and frustratingly lacking in detail, particularly around his motivations and views. Historical record is largely related to his role as courtesan rather than painter.

And so Cumming painstakingly pieces together an impression of him through the interpretation of his art and the information that does exist. Her frustration at this lack of knowledge screams from every page. There´s a sense that she would give a great deal for just an hour in his company.

More is known of John Snare, the Reading stationer, who bought a portrait of Prince Charles from a country house sale in Radley in 1845 believing it was by the Spanish master when everyone else thought it was a Van Dyck. Snare’s story is quite something also, his obsession with the painting taking him from Reading to Edinburgh and then New York and all but breaking him.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough, for its passion and emotion, for its insight into the world of art, for the mystery of the Reading portrait and most of all for bringing us just that little bit closer to Velázquez and helping me to understand better his genius.

And so finally, I urge you to seek him out. Through this marvellous book, of course, but also here in Madrid at the Prado, where Las Meninas awaits along with so many other works. It was love at first sight when I saw it, and each visit only deepens my attachment. Or if the Prado is too far the Rokeby Venus is at the National Gallery and Juan de Pareja at the Met. We’re in age where these treasures are more accessible than they have ever been and each canvas is worth the time and the energy.   

A love letter to Spain - cada día te quiero más

A decade in Spain. Well, where did that go? It only seems like yesterday that I was nervously giving the airport taxi driver my new address in Madrid, using French pronunciation that stumped us both for a short while. 

In the 10 years since I’ve managed to move on from “una cerveza por favor” all the way through to swearing at footballers and (nearly) mastering the subjunctive. It’s been quite the journey. And I’ve learned much more besides about this wonderful country and its people.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that when I first came to Madrid – for an interview in July 2012 – I didn’t really have much of an idea of where it was. In Spain, and not on the coast, but not a lot more than that. (I did know where Spain was.)

We had made a decision to move overseas – somewhere, almost anywhere – as a cultural and educational experience for the family. Among those cities previously considered, but that didn’t come off, were Munich, Helsinki and Delhi. We weren’t really that fussy.

But we got super lucky, as a Spaniard speaking English might say. Madrid, about which more another time, was the perfect destination for us for many reasons. Happily it turned out the capital was right in the middle of the country!! And that gave us the opportunity to explore all four points of the compass.

It takes a bit of work to discover Spain. It is not to be found on a sun lounger on the Costa Brava or wondering the Barrío Gotíco – although, Lord knows both are reason enough for visiting. When we arrived, we didn’t even know what we didn’t know.

 

The north looks like New Zealand or Cornwall or Brittany, and has the country's best beaches in Galicia, and so what if the water's a little colder than it is in Alicante. The south east looks  enough like the old west that the spaghetti westerns were made there. The Basques speak a language that looks like it belongs in a fantasy novel. Beautiful, wild Teruel is so remote and unknown that its tourist board once marketed it with the slogan Teruel Existe. And on the southern coast the shadow of Africa looms as a reminder of a rich and diverse history fashioned by geography. 

Fall asleep on a beach in Formentera and you could wake up believing you were in the Caribbean, or Italy, such is the volume of tourists seeking the western Sardinia. Take a siesta in a village in Castilla La Mancha and you're right back in the 18^th Century.  

Don Quixote’s windmills can still be seen on the plains close to Toledo, and the most wondrous Roman ruins in Merida, Segovia, Tarragona... There is skiing within an hour of Madrid, and in the south within an hour of the beach and the best and friendliest resort I’ve ever visited at Baqueira in the Pyrenees. And some of the worst football I've ever seen is played in the best atmosphere I've ever experienced just a few kilometres from here. And I wouldn't miss it for the world. 

La Rioja in the autumn, when the harvest is coming in and the vines burnished in shades of red, brown and yellow, feels like the most beautiful and bountiful place on earth. Although for drama it cannot beat Ribeira Sacra (left) where the vineyards defy gravity, clinging on to the steep canyons.

Ronda is extraordinary, Córdoba even more so and Cadíz is bursting with history and grandeur. Cáceres might be the best preserved medieval City in a country packed with them, and also a marvellous place for a sundowner in the Plaza Mayor. And Sevilla apparently might be the best of all, but I’ve not made it there yet.

The Alhambra is majestic, El Escorial imposing, La Mezquita simply spell-binding. My favourite Cathedral is in Toledo, but everybody says this is only because we didn’t have time to go into the one in León. Burgos, a place that far too many people drive by – including us for many years – also has a Cathedral worthy of the diversion. It’s almost enough to turn one to religion.   

In Bilbao the Guggenheim shines with the optimism and modernity it has brought to help renew a great City. In Madrid, a young capital by European standards, the nation’s cultural heritage and history lines the walls of the Prado, from where Las Meninas calls like a siren.  And in Barcelona, you could probably visit La Sagrada Familia weekly for years and discover a new view on each occasion.

And for me there is always joy at being on the open road. Spain is a land of vast and empty landscapes, of light and shadows and there is something new to be found at every exit. We’ve been exploring for 10 years, and need another ten at least. And more still  for Portugal. 

Exploring has been wonderful, stopping just as good. There’s nothing better than taking tapas on the Calle Laurel in Logroño, unless it’s eating oysters in Vigo, navajas in Asturias or cochinillo in Segovia. Or take a beer with the ghost of Hemingway in Pamplona's Café Iruña. 

Your jamón should be from Extremadura, cherries in season too - oh my goodness, the cherries - wonderful olive oil from Jaén and beef from Ávila and Salamanca. And calamari sandwiches in Madrid? Perhaps that is one for the locals. There are too many memorable meals to mention, but I’m not sure we’ll ever beat the time we came across two men roasting whole fish on barbecues fashioned from oil drums outside a roadside shack on the coast north of Santander. Better tasting or fresher fish, I’ve never eaten.

And of course the vineyards are not just for show. Spain produces the best value wine in the world, and there’s probably nowhere in the world you can get a better bottle for under €8, and for €30 something really outstanding. I have developed a preference for reds from Ribera del Duero and whites from Ribera Sacra, but really, you cannot go wrong. Early on in our tenure here I did an experiment to see exactly how low you could go and the wine still be drinkable. It’s about €3, although the €1.50 rosé from the corner shop in Cangas was useful for cleaning the barbecue.

And Spaniards are very gregarious so there’s always a good opportunity to take a copa or a gin and tonic (which is taken very seriously). And no better people to have it with. All we have found since we came to Spain is kindness and generosity. There’s a healthy outlook on life here. People are more relaxed than their northern neighbours, live longer and seem happier. And why not? The sun almost never stops shining, and it is the land of plenty. The “relaxedness” shouldn’t be mistaken for idleness though, as it too often is. Spaniards are as industrious and efficient as any other Europeans, in my experience, they just choose not to let it interfere with life as much as the rest of us. And more power to them for that.

So to all of them and everyone else who has made our time here so enjoyable - and in particular to the four of you who came with me: Muchísimas Gracias.

And for those of you who'd like to pay us a visit: there's plenty of room at the inn, but time may be running out...

50 Books #11 - Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

There are certain books that have had me taking diversions to seek out evocative places or neighbourhoods. A beer in the Oxford Bar in Edinburgh’s new town in honour of John Rebus, for example, or a diversion in Barcelona in pursuit of Julian Carax.

There’s only one book, however, on which a holiday itinerary has been based: Labyrinth, Kate Mosse’s evocative and exciting time-bending historical novel in which a 20^th Century archaeological discovery is linked to a 13^th Century war.

 

Labyrinth kindled an enduring interest in the Cathar heresy, which challenged the conventional thinking of the Catholic Church in southern Europe in the 12^th to 14^th Centuries.

The medieval fortress city of Carcassonne was a stronghold of the Cathars. In 1209 the Albigensian crusade of the established Church set out to retake it and a bloody and cruel siege and subjugation followed. The historical elements of Labyrinth begin in July of that year when a young herbalist, Alais, is given a book by her father who tells her it contains the secret of the Holy Grail. In parallel, 800 years in the future, young archaeologist Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons and a strange labyrinth symbol in a Pyrenean cave.

So begins an adventure for both women as they seek to illuminate their mysteries. It’s a great story and brilliantly told with pace and tension and two heroines for the ages: brave, curious and resourceful. But what really grabbed me was the atmospheric settings. Mosse brings to life the desperation, danger and resilience of a city under siege but also the essential mystery of the Pyrenees, an ancient frontier, hiding place and natural reserve.

So in 2017, by which time I’d already visited Carcassonne on a couple of occasions and spent time in the Pyrenees, my son and I set out in search of the Cathars and Labyrinth.

After a night in Catalonia, our first stop was the Chateau de Peyrepertuse (left) a ruined fortress in the Aude which sits 800m up on a limestone ridge commanding magnificent views of the Pyrenees. We climbed to the castle through the woods below and got a pretty good idea of why this and other Cathar castles were called unassailable. There are few better places to imagine the Cathar age.

From Peyrepertuse the next stop was Montaillou, about 90km to the east just over the border in the Ariege. Montaillou is another Cathar village, made famous by the eponymous history written in the 1970s by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. This history creatively narrates the social, economic and beliefs of the people around the turn of the 14^th Century. Just outside the modern village sits the old chateau and with it evidence of the history Ladurie details. This is another remote, isolated place and speaks loudly to the zeal and paranoia necessary to want to suppress religious belief and practice in such a community. I found it very moving.

And from Montaillou to dinner in Carcassonne. The ancient citadel, sat on the outskirts of a largely unlovely modern city, is best seen from the outside where its towers and walls offer views from every side. It’s a truly impressive sight. Inside, less so, as it’s crowded with tourist attractions, but nonetheless there are quiet corners where it is possible to conjure up the ghost of Alais. And if you can find a place to sit and eat outside with a good view of the walls and a bottle of Languedoc red, well, there aren’t many better spots.

Our final stop, the following day was beautiful Albi, the city of Toulouse-Lautrec and the source of the name of the Albigensian Crusade. The lasting impact of the Cathars there is the commanding 13^th Century fortress Cathedral, built to demonstrate Catholic dominance. In there, after another fabulous dinner, we met a couple of Belorussian nuns from whom we bought Christmas tree decorations, which was a bold sales pitch on a sweltering August night.

The power of great historical novels is to bring to life the sights, sounds, smells and other sensations of a place at a particular moment in time. Kate Mosse does that consistently and powerfully throughout her Languedoc trilogy, of which Labyrinth is the opening volume. In particular she evokes the sixth sense, and that feeling that ghosts and history are near if just out of reach. It’s a great gift and one for which I am profoundly grateful.

Kraków in the spring; as British as...

Found in the foreword to the "Kraków in Your Pocket" guidebook available in good hotels in the charming Polish city now:

"If you think you've outwitted the rest of the world by visiting Kraków in April and May then think again. Those looking for Robinson Crusoe moments of solitude should look elsewhere, there are times when Kraków feels as British as being buggered at boarding school; if you're here at the weekend then your lingering memory isn't unlikely to be of lairy English berks puking in gutters and leering at bar girls. Indeed, Saturdays in the City are a bit of an irritant, but fortunately you'll find the rest of the time time there's more to Kraków than Sky Sports and angry looking looking blokes pushing their way into kebab queues."

Makes you proud, doesn't it? Our chief export in 2008: angry looking blokes pushing their way into kebab queues. What was it Wellington said about his men? "I don't know what they do to the enemy, but by God they frighten me".