The pose, without a doubt, is important. Looking straight ahead, chin as if newly sculpted, arms like this and that, always simulating a forced naturalness. Silks, shawls and lace for them; rigorous black suits for them. A montera here, a hand on the chin there. Majas, manolas and ‘ciociare’. The opulence of large-format canvases compared to the sobriety of the first photograph. The people at the center of art and the portrait as the highest embodiment of power. “The 19th century is the century of individualism”, confirms Javier Barón, head of conservation of 19th-century painting at the Museo Nacional del Prado and curator of the exhibition ‘The century of the portrait’.
Because if the 19th century is the century of individualism, Barón insists, the portrait is the artistic expression that best captures and explains the sign of the times. Namely: the rise of the bourgeoisie and the loss of influence of the monarchy; the discovery of childhood and female leadership; death and picturesqueness. An exhibition that he opens at Caixaforum Barcelona is all about, a window into the golden age of Spanish portraiture. More than 170 pieces from the Madrid museum and with such illustrious protagonists as Goya, Sorolla, Zuloaga, Fortuny, Madrazo and Nonell, among others.
“You might think that 173 portraits It is somewhat monotonous, but in the end it is the opposite: it is an exhibition on what the history of the 19th century was in Spain”, highlights the director of the Prado, Miguel Falomir. In addition, adds Barón, it is the first time that the portrait is addressed in all its techniques and artistic manifestations, be they miniatures, medals, sculptures, drawings, photographs, prints and, of course, canvases.
All of this feeds into an exhibition that can be visited in Barcelona until June 4 and will tour Zaragoza, Seville, Valencia and Palma from then on. The La Caixa Foundation points out that this is the fifth exhibition that they have organized in collaboration with the Prado Museum after blockbusters such as ‘Velázquez and the Golden Age’, ‘Goya, lights and shadows’, ‘The Gods of Prado’ and ‘Little treasures of the Prado’.
A visitor, in front of a portrait of Sorolla
limited freedom
In the rooms, illustrious figures such as Fernando VII, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos or the banker and senator Jaime Girona greet, but, as Falomir recalls, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, As the centuries pass, the leading role abandons the sitter and fattens the portraitist. And there, of course, is the grace of the matter. «The portrait has always been one of the manifestations that has attracted me the most, since it is where the artist has the most limited freedom of him. Most are the result of a commission, so one of the great mysteries in the history of art is that the artist is capable of leaving his stamp on a portrait », reflects Falomir.
An exhibition that is articulated from thematic rooms dedicated to power, childhood, the feminine, death and images of the artists themselves contributes to this mystery. A tour dotted with masterpieces such as the portrait of Jovellanos that Goya made in 1798; the astonishing painting of Manuela Isidra Téllez-Girón, future Duchess of Abrantes, who Agustin Esteve he devised being inspired by Velázquez; a portrait of Sorolla of María de Figueroa dressed as Menina; a self-portrait by Goya from 1815; the ‘Faustian’ fantasies of Fortuny…
One of the works that comes out of the Prado for the first time is the portrait that Philip Alexius Lászlo de Lombos made of Elinor Glyn, a writer who coined the concept of ‘it girl’ in her novel ‘It’, while close to half of the exhibited pieces have been restored for the occasion.
Goya’s self-portrait is one of the stars of the exhibition
In the 19th century, explains Barón, the childhood it becomes the age represented par excellence, but it is also the moment when artists become aware of their own condition and become protagonists of their work. “It is an expansion of his personality,” says the curator in relation to the last sections of the exhibition, centered on the self-portrait and on canvases in which painters such as Ignacio de León, Francisco Masriera or Mariano Fortuny show their studies.
Based on the selected works, Caixaforum proposes three itineraries that explore the economic and social structures of the time and that allow us to discover the portrait through artistic techniques, 19th century society and clothing.