Intellectual and taken: Rubens and the Baroque Flamenco, in CaixaForum Barcelona

Barcelona,

More than sixty major works of the Baroque Flemish Painting Collections of the Prado Museum will spend this summer in CaixaForum Barcelona, on the occasion of the sixth shows that this institution program in the Catalan capital in collaboration with the Madrid Pinacoteca.

Under the police station of José Juan Pérez Preciado, Museum Technician of the Conservation Area of Flamenco Painting and Schools of the North in the Prado, this project proposes a thematic tour of pieces of teachers such as Van Dyck, Jordaens or Brueghel, and above all of Rubens, who was not only an artist but also scholarly, he knew very thoroughly seniority and stoic philosophy Knowledge of languages, could access different European courts throughout its journey.

Able to provide his compositions with a violent and sensual expressiveness, it had a lot to do with the renewal of artistic canons in that region of Flanders in the seventeenth century: there were many who tried to emulate it.

In addition to paintings, in some cases of imposing and recently restored formats (even Barcelona has traveled the desired Paris judgment), They have moved to CaixaForum engraved, drawings, ivory, silver objects and less known books that will allow the public to deepen the knowledge of the aesthetic concerns of this moment.

As in the recent exhibition on the Rubens workshop in Madrid, the painter’s study has been recreated here, introducing the spectators in their work environment, and their desire to study and copy works by artists of the past, both of antiquity and the Renaissance and the Flemish local tradition, which in some cases modified, as if I wanted to improve them. He even incorporated some sculptures from other times into his paintings.

Immense cartoonist, was used in tapestries, architecture works, covers of ephemeral publications and decorations for ceremonies, always from a scholarly perspective and from the imagination. His curiosity led him to collect all kinds of pieces in his visited Casa Workshop in Antwerp. In Barcelona it is exhibited The death of Senecawhere he shows the philosopher suicide while his disciples take notes from his last words; It is based, precisely, on the face of an ancient sculpture that represents a fisherman.

On his fundamental trip to Italy he studied the teachers of the Renaissance, such as Rafael, Tiziano and also Leonardo. In fact, he drew The battle of Anghiarito which Da Vinci dedicated a fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio Florentino, today missing: he has provided us with a certain approach to the work.

In the second section, “Divine Passions”, is diving on several usual themes in Flemish Baroque painting, such as classical mythology. This is where they will meet us Paris’s trialalready purified the cloths of the goddesses; Diana and her nymphs surprised by satyrsmatter in which Rubens liked to show mythological characters enjoying love and nature; either The rapture of Europerepresentation of another of Metamorphosis of Ovid.

Other artists followed Rubens’s path on his love for mythology. Can be seen here PAN winnerby Jaques Jordaens, and the subtle Dance of children with the god Pancarved in ivory by Lucas Faydherbe.

The third chapter, “Image and Counter -Reformation,” highlights the genius as a renovator of religious iconography, after, following the religion wars of the second half of the 16th century, much of the religious heritage of the Netherlands was destroyed by the Protestant iconoclasts.

Rubens was at the service of the new religious ideals, which reflected from the tension, seeking the emotion of the spectator to large altar paintings for churches and cathedrals or small paintings for particular oratories, such as Rest in escape to Egypt with Santoswhich belonged to Carlos I of England.

Barcelona have also arrived, The piety from Anton Van Dyck, more sensual and less violent than Rubens; either The piety by Jordaens, whose dead arm remembers the Descent Van der Weyden in the Prado. From Jordaens we will also contemplate Burial of Christin which he used the technique of ink drawing, in contrast to the pictorial of that piety.

On behalf of the great paintings to altar it is exhibited The killing of the innocentsmade by Paulus Pontius from a work by Rubens, opposed to drawing Hermann-Joseph mystical visionof the same artist, reproduction of a painting by Van Dyck with a more devout aesthetic, but also attractive.

Pedro Pablo Rubens and Jan Brueghel el Viejo,

A fourth episode, “patronage and collecting”, studies how the culture of collecting in Flanders grew during the Baroque. Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of Felipe II and governor of the Netherlands, appreciated the potential of flamenco art to proclaim the prosperity of the territories in which she ruled and Rubens and Jan Brueghel el Viejo, specialized in landscapes and issues of a dead nature, participated in that cause. The collaboration between the two was the germ of works in which plastic beauty mattered as much as the message of cultural excellence that was desired to expand, and some of these works had Spain as destination.

We will contemplate the portrait of the Infanta, collaboration of both, and the piece of Brueghel el Viejo and Giulio Cesare ProCaccini Guirnalda with the Virgin, the Child and two angelsprobably commissioned by Federico Borromeo, Cardinal Archbishop of Milan and equally patron. The representations of the Virgin surrounded by flowers proliferated among the flamenco artists of the early seventeenth century in response to the Protestant reform.

The famous The view and smellby Jan Brueghel the Elder, Hendrick Van Balen, Frans Franken II and others, represents that birth and boom of collecting in the Netherlands in that period. Next to your partner, Taste, ear and touchwas sent to the Court of Madrid, as replicas of two lost paintings that the City Council of Antwerp gave to the archdukes.

AND San Hubberto’s visionby Rubens and Brueghel the Elder, shows a specifically flamenco issue with the history of this saint, patron of the Netherlands that led a dissipated life and became faith after experiencing an epiphany when, among the antlers of a deer to which he was about to hunt, a cross appeared.

The “Art and power” section underlines the way in which Flemish art became a political communication tool. It is known that Rubens made portraits of the rulers from all over Europe who influenced local artists, and that he devised allegories tailored to the powerful. Like him, other painters, recorders, poets and scholars celebrated in their creations the military and political glories of European princes.

The most outstanding work of this area is The Immaculate Conception of Rubens himself, whose devotion became a matter of state in our country. For him Allegorical portrait of the Count-Duke of OlivaresRubens used as a model that Velázquez made the valid, and the battles are not lacking: in Isabel Clara Eugenia on the site of Bredaby Peter Snayers, the artist reflects the Spanish siege to that city.

The cultivation of the portrait and the studies of the human figure from models taken from the natural, then used in the characters of the paintings, were common among the Flemish artists of the Baroque. In addition to seeking the representation of the physical details of the portrayed and their personality, they were useful with propaganda purpose.

We have to look at María de Medici, Queen of Franceof Rubens himself, which affects the political power that had the portrayed, also reflected by Frans Pourbus the young man severity. But Anton Van Dyck was probably the great portraitist among flamenco; You can contemplate Count Hendrik van den Berghnear the expressive Three street musiciansby Jordaens.

The section “The nobility of painting” delves into the self -representation of artists as illustrious, ennobled characters, parallel to the claim of the art of painting as a noble work and a superior intellectual activity.

Highlight here The painter’s familycanvas in which Jordaens represents himself with his people as a bourgeois who loves music and next to a maid that brings them fruit, or the sarcastic The painter monkeyby David Teniers, where a monkey with attributes of that trade recreates an idea within his workshop; The future client, with feathers, gold chain and bag at the waist, observes its procedure.

“Inside and outside” deepens, meanwhile, in the representation of the flamenco landscape as a genre and as a reflection of how daily life was in the Netherlands, through pieces such as pieces such as Market and laundry in Flandersby Jan Brueghel el Viejo and Joost de Momper II. The daily actions, as is known, were a recurring reason for the artists of the Netherlands since the end of the 16th century.

Finally, in the “Living nature, dead nature” section, cooking and still lifes are awaited, prolongation of a genre that had a lot of strength in the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century. We have to attend to Deer harassed by a dog holidayby Paul de Vos, which shows the violence of hunting; Fruitererof Frans Snyders, for its reflection of the tactile quality of fruits, objects and animals; either Bird concertby Jan Fyt, a skillful author to capture the different textures of the animals.

There is no section of this route that does not constitute, in the background, a feast.