Madrid,
Jacques-Louis David was a contemporary of Goya (he lived between 1748 and 1825, next year the bicentenary of his death will be remembered) and he had his death in exile in common with him; forced in the case of French and induced in that of Spanish. It must be remembered that the notion of the political commitment of artists, in France and not only, had a lot to do with the Revolution of 1789 itself: David and others became involved in it as citizens and we recognize their beliefs in their painting; He was a Jacobin deputy, a friend of revolutionaries and a supporter of Robespierre, and he also intervened, very directly, in the suppression of the Academies. It is possible to interpret his images as chronicles of that violent decade.
After the fall of Robespierre, the painter was even on the verge of being guillotined, but he was able to reintegrate into public life by managing to ingratiate himself with Napoleon, whom he portrayed from an approach very close to propaganda. In short, David was a narrator of current events, aware that art could influence society if it directed certain messages along certain paths, one of them appealing to Antiquity.
He refined his style in Rome, the city where we can say that he became primitive and where it took place The Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785), a work that shocked the gallant society due to its warlike and classical theme, which refers to the primitive imperial capital: traditionally the Roman Empire had interested the West, but not so much its early times as its subsequent decline and rise. . David did look for those roots, inspired by Horaceby Pierre Corneille, a dramatic piece dedicated to that moment.
That would not be, as is known, his only painted oath: in 1789 he made his unfinished Oath of the Jeu de Paume; He recreated a meeting of the convention, the struggle between the revolutionary demands of the bourgeoisie and the traditional establishments; The moments in which popular dissatisfaction materialized when an attempt was made to modify the Assembly, the bourgeoisie were expelled, they met in the aforementioned Jeu de Paume Hall and formed their own, without hierarchy or orders. David transfers an episode from Ancient Rome to the present: the assembly members swear an oath; In the center we see an aristocrat, a priest and a friar embracing, probably anticipating the coming disaster.
The painter once had a workshop in which hundreds of students from all over Europe were trained; Among many others, he was the teacher in Paris of José de Madrazo, who also consolidated those teachings in Italy, worked in depth around that motif of the oath and would be the first painter to direct the Prado Museum, for almost twenty years: between 1838 and 1857. The art gallery, in room 60 of its Villanueva building, is dedicated to him, an exhibition curated by Carlos G. Navarro, curator of the 19th century Painting Area, which precisely reviews the complex ideological evolution of this author, the founder of the famous saga, from the funds of the Daza-Madrazo Collection, which has been part of the center’s collection for almost two decades.
The exhibition, titled “Paper Oaths. The citizen pact in the drawings of José de Madrazo”, has a dozen compositions – selected from more than three hundred drawings – that show the deep influence of David on his career, his attention to Greco-Roman statuary – very evident in anatomical studies – and his particular interpretation of that theme dear to his mentor, that of the oath and the symbolism it implied; It is no anecdote that, when one and the other parted ways, David presented Madrazo with a preparatory drawing for the Oath of the Jeu de Paume.
Issues addressed by the creator of The death of Maratsuch as virtue, heroism and resistance, which allude to certain episodes of ancient history but could be read in the light of contemporary times, are latent in scenes such as The death of Viriatus, The destruction of Numancia either The death of Lucretiacompositions of evident aesthetic value, but also political significance in relation to their own context.
On the other hand, this exhibition wants to delve deeper, taking into account these issues, a creative process that in its case would not respond to a mere formal investigation, but also to those concerns linked to the present: we will detect how he adapted that symbology of the oath to different iconography. , putting it at the service of contemporary conceptions of citizen pact and national identity, in the same way that in David he made reference to patriotism and the civic virtues that were expected to accompany the end of the Old Regime. In the case of Spanish, the gesture would perhaps acquire a greater diversity of interpretations in relation to political developments.
We can understand that in The death of Lucretia The conception of the oath in Madrazo is similar to the one he had been able to apprehend from his teacher, but already in the also cited Death of Viriatus and the Destruction of Numancia Its meaning will be different, linked to the popular opposition to the entry into Spain of Napoleon and his troops. That speech would reach its climax in the composition Heroism of the city of Santanderin which said oath refers to loyalty to Fernando VII. We know that he dedicated a large painting to the latter’s swearing in of the Constitution, but it has not been preserved and there are no graphic clues left of it; In any case, and paraphrasing Barthes, the collected drawings could be understood as fragments of a political speech.
The first piece in the exhibition is a modellino for The death of Lucretia and Brutus’s oathwhich evokes the episode that was the seed of the Roman Republic: Lucretius, Collatinus, Publius Valerius and Brutus swear revenge after she committed suicide after being raped by the son of the last monarch of Rome. The declamatory style of the image has to do, of course, with David, but also with the neoclassical theater that the artist had seen in Paris. We will also contemplate a study of two naked men for the same piece, where his look at classical statuary is evident, although in the finished canvases he reduced the monumentality of the figures.
Three trials converge in the sample around The death of Viriatuswhose original painting is also preserved in the Prado: a modellino, a study of a male nude in profile and with a dagger raised, and a study of two men embracing. In the first, as in the last work, we see the moment in which the Lusitanians find the corpse of the shepherd, who was murdered by their own generals bribed by Rome: some cry for his death or for their own future, two swear revenge with their swords . Faced with the favorable readings of David’s works towards Rome, Madrazo here praises the resistance of the pre-Roman peoples.
As for body studies, they attest to the meticulous study of the appearance of each individual and the position of their limbs; Compared to Mengs, the Cantabrian author advocated the synthetic and expressive style that he could find in David. At times, he replicated or answered well-known poses of ancient figures.
The destruction of Numancia It also centers three drawings: a modellino, a study of a man raising a chain and carrying a sword and another of a man with a torch and sword. The story of the Numantine resistance gained popularity at the beginning of the 19th century in the service of the Spanish context of that time, despite the fact that the citizen’s oath is destructive here: the inhabitants of this city decided to end their lives rather than surrender to the invader.
The one who raises a chain in this study is the leader Megara, not at all idealized and his features constant in one sketch and another (the sword alludes to that self-annihilation); that of the man with a torch refers to the response of the Numantines to his speech, which Madrazo studied very thoroughly, linking it with the iconography of the oath in a renewed political sense.
Finally, we will see a second modellino in the Prado for The dispute between Greeks and Trojans over the body of Patrocluswhose gestures draw from those he had admired in the Borghese Gladiator which he was able to examine in Paris; two preparatory compositions for Heroism of the city of Santanderin reference to the city’s insurrection against the French, commanded by a Velarde whom he himself knew (in the second he incorporates Bishop Rafael Menéndez de Luarca, regent of Cantabria, as a sign of fidelity to Fernando VII); and the only work in the room that does not correspond to Madrazo: Three men admiring the Gladiator by candlelightan engraving by William Pether after a canvas by Wright of Derby. It accounts for a widespread fascination with that Gladiator of the Louvre among the artists of this moment, who took his muscles and gestures as a source of inspiration.
“Paper oaths. The citizen pact in the drawings of José de Madrazo”
NATIONAL PRADO MUSEUM
Paseo del Prado, s/n
Madrid
From November 6, 2024 to March 2, 2025
