The Pictures Were Held By The Clenched Dead
Hand Of The Church And The Throne.
They could not be sold or
distributed.
They made the dark places luminous, patiently biding their
time.
It was long enough coming, and it was a despicable hand that brought
them into the light. Ferdinand VII. thought his palace would look
fresher if the walls were covered with French paper, and so packed all
the pictures off to the empty building on the Prado, which his
grandfather had built for a museum. As soon as the glorious collection
was exposed to the gaze of the world, its incontestable merit was at
once recognized. Especially were the works of Velazquez, hitherto almost
an unknown name in Europe, admired and appreciated. Ferdinand, finding
he had done a clever thing unawares, began to put on airs and poser for
a patron of art. The gallery was still further immensely enriched on the
exclaustra-tion of the monasteries, by the hidden treasures of the
Escorial, and other spoils of mortmain. And now, as a collection of
masterpieces, it has no equal in the world.
A few figures will prove this. It contains more than two thousand
pictures already catalogued, - all of them worth a place on the walls.
Among these there are ten by Raphael, forty-three by Titian, thirty-four
by Tintoret, twenty-five by Paul Veronese. Rubens has the enormous
contingent of sixty-four. Of Teniers, whose works are sold for fabulous
sums for the square inch, this extraordinary museum possesses no less
than sixty finished pictures, - the Louvre considers itself rich with
fourteen. So much for a few of the foreigners. Among the Spaniards the
three greatest names could alone fill a gallery. There are sixty-five
Velazquez, forty-six Murillos, and fifty-eight Riberas. Compare these
figures with those of any other gallery in existence, and you will at
once recognize the hopeless superiority of this collection. It is not
only the greatest collection in the world, but the greatest that can
ever be made until this is broken up.
But with all this mass of wealth it is not a complete, nor, properly
speaking, a representative museum. You cannot trace upon its walls the
slow, groping progress of art towards perfection. It contains few of
what the book-lovers call incunabula. Spanish art sprang out
full-armed from the mature brain of Rome. Juan de Juanes carne back from
Italy a great artist. The schools of Spain were budded on a full-bearing
tree. Charles and Philip bought masterpieces, and cared Jittle for the
crude efforts of the awkward pencils of the necessary men who came
before Raphael. There is not a Perugino in Madrid. There is nothing
Byzantine, no trace of Renaissance; nothing of the patient work of the
early Flemings, - the art of Flanders comes blazing in with the full
splendor of Rubens and Van Dyck. And even among the masters, the
representation is most unequal. Among the wilderness of Titians and
Tintorets you find but two Domenichinos and two Correg-gios. Even in
Spanish art the gallery is far from complete. There is almost nothing
of such genuine painters as Zurbaran and Herrera.
But recognizing all this, there is, in this glorious temple, enough to
fill the least enthusiastic lover of art with delight and adoration for
weeks and months together. If one knew he was to be blind in a year,
like the young musician in Auerbach's exquisite romance, I know of no
place in the world where he could garner up so precious a store of
memories for the days of darkness, memories that would haunt the soul
with so divine a light of consolation, as in that graceful Palace of the
Prado.
It would be a hopeless task to attempt to review with any detail the
gems of this collection. My memory is filled with the countless canvases
that adorn the ten great halls. If I refer to my notebook I am equally
discouraged by the number I have marked for special notice. The
masterpieces are simply innumerable. I will say a word of each room, and
so give up the unequal contest.
As you enter the Museum from the north, you are in a wide
sturdy-columned vestibule, hung with splashy pictures of Luca Giordano.
To your right is the room devoted to the Spanish school; to the left,
the Italian. In front is the grand gallery where the greatest works of
both schools are collected. In the Spanish saloon there is an
indefinable air of severity and gloom. It is less perfectly lighted than
some others, and there is something forbidding in the general tone of
the room. There are prim portraits of queens and princes, monks in
contemplation, and holy people in antres vast and deserts idle. Most
visitors come in from a sense of duty, look hurriedly about, and go out
with a conscience at ease; in fact, there is a dim suggestion of the
fagot and the rack about many of the Spanish masters. At one end of this
gallery the Prometheus of Ribera agonizes chained to his rock. His
gigantic limbs are flung about in the fury of immortal pain. A vulture,
almost lost in the blackness of the shadows, is tugging at his vitals.
His brow is convulsed with the pride and anguish of a demigod. It is a
picture of horrible power. Opposite hangs one of the few Zurbarans of
the gallery, - also a gloomy and terrible work. A monk kneels in shadows
which, by the masterly chiaroscuro of this ascetic artist, are made to
look darker than blackness. Before him in a luminous nimbus that burns
its way through the dark, is the image of the crucified Saviour, head
downwards. So remarkable is the vigor of the drawing and the power of
light in this picture that you can imagine you see the resplendent
crucifix suddenly thrust into the shadow by the strong hands of
invisible spirits, and swayed for a moment only before the dazzled eyes
of the ecstatic solitary.
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