Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina | Santa Caterina, 1510 | Museo Nacional del Prado
This is one of the Spanish Renaissance’s most emblematic depictions of a female figure and the best known of Yáñez de la Almedina’s works.
Both considerations are due to the visibility this work has received at the Museo del Prado, where it has been one of the essential icons in its galleries of 16th-century Spanish painting ever since it arrived in 1946.
According to Jacopo de la Vorágine’s The Golden Legend, Saint Catherine of Alexandria was a young, wise and virtuous princess who loved the Lord.
Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina (1489-1536) | Santa Caterina, 1510 | Museo Nacional del Prado
That beautiful young woman reject marrying emperor Maximilian and was therefore subjected to a long martyrdom that included the amputation of both breasts, torture on the wheel, and decapitation.
The different episodes of this legend were assiduously depicted, often as narrative sequences in which the faithful could follow the saint’s heroic vicissitudes.
This form of representation perfected in the Gothic era persisted in Spain throughout the 16th century, but Yáñez, who fully adopted the new formulas of the Italian Renaissance, opted to depict Saint Catherine without narrative components, suggesting them only through her attributes: the sword that decapitated her, the palm leaf of martyrdom and the book that alludes to her wisdom.
His depiction offers a monumental and serene figure directly related to Leonardo da Vinci’s work.
The figure’s sculptural corpulence is marked by a powerful verticality elegantly countered by the harmonious movement of her arms, a trait characteristic of Yáñez, who derived it from Perugino.
The entire figure is conceived with a clarity emphasized by the clear and tranquil lighting that captures her in a single, eternal moment.
Like the female model, the architecture in the background was repeated on other occasions.
Drawn from Florentine models, it suggests the Saint’s regal surroundings, strengthens the figure’s monumentality and defines the composition and space.
Outstanding in this representation is the saint’s rich clothing, a handsome and surprising conjunction of Italian and Spanish elements that range from the Moorish fabric of her tunic, which is decorated with large Kufic and Nesjíe letters and has a luxurious belt at the waist, to the striking pearl choker that bears a splendid Renaissance pendant.
This panel must have been made in Valencia during Fernando Yáñez’s first known period, after he returned to Spain from his studies in Italy.
That would date it from between 1505 and 1510.
The panel was acquired by the Spanish state in 1946 from the Marquis of Casa-Argudín’s collection. | Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Francisco Goya | The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or "The Executions"| Museo Nacional del Prado
In the December of 1813, King Ferdinand VII’s return to Spain and his entry into Madrid were announced in by the Treaty of Valençay, which that year ended the Peninsular War Fernando who had been a prisoner of Napoleon in France since his own abdication in 1808, the absent king commenced his return to Spain in February of 1814, his pledge to the 1812 Constitution being the condition of his restoration to the throne.
His arrival in Madrid would coincide with the first commemoration of the uprising of the people of the city against the occupying French on the 2nd of May 1808.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) | The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or "The Executions"| Museo Nacional del Prado
Between February and March 1814, the Regency Council -chaired by the infante Luis María de Borbón y Villabriga-, the Cortes, and the Madrid City Council began preparations for the ceremonial arrival of the king.
The bibliography on The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid or "The Fight against the Mamelukes" and its companion painting, The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid or "The Executions", wrongfully considered that these pieces of art were painted so as to be exhibited in the streets of Madrid.
In fact, neither the documents regarding the ceremony, nor the descriptions of the temporarily erected monuments and their allegorical ornamentation, mention the paintings by Goya.
Several invoices concerning the payments for the frames of these two paintings, have recently been located in the Royal General Archive.
These expenses were registered as ‘King’s Bedchamber’ in July and November 1814, thus implying that they were funded by the king for the Palace rooms, and that they were most certainly painted after May 1814.
However, it was the Regency Council which commissioned the work in February, according to the documents from the Ministry of Governance and the minister, Juan Álvarez Guerra.
On the 24th of May, Goya’s conditions to carry out the job were accepted.
Allegedly, it was the minister himself who proposed Goya for these paintings, because of "the paramount importance of such a praiseworthy undertaking and the undisguised ability of the said professor to carry it out... that while the aforementioned Goya is employed in this work, the Treasury should remunerate him -in addition to what he has invested in canvases, priming, and colours according to his own accounts- the sum of one thousand and five hundred reales per month by way of compensation... so that such an illustrious and distinguished Professor does not lack the means of subsistence in his advanced age".
On the 11th of May, two days before his arrival to Madrid, Ferdinand VII arrested the ministers of the government of the Regency, exiled the infante to Toledo and abolished the Constitution.
The invoices for the manufacture of two frames for "the large pictures of paintings referring to the 2nd of May 1808" state that they were finished on 29 November 1814, the date from which they must have been hung in the Palace, although there is no record of this. | Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Eliseo Meifrèn i Roig | Marina con una boya, 1925 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Eliseo Meifrèn i Roig | Marina con una boya, 1925 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Eliseo Meifrèn i Roig (1857/59-1940) was a Spanish Impressionist painter.
Eliseo Meifrèn i Roig | Plaza de París, 1887 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Eliseo Meifrèn i Roig | Plaza de París, 1887 | Museo Nacional del Prado
"A Square in Paris" is one of Meifrén’s views of Paris, where he spent various periods from the late 1870s onwards.
It depicts a café on the Place de Clichy near Montmartre.
It predates the depictions of such subjects by other Catalan artists including Santiago Rusiñol and Ramón Casas, while the truncated, angled position of the table in the foreground reveals the influence of the recent French painting.| Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Joaquín Pallarés Allustante | Invalido del arte, 1895 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Joaquín Pallarés Allustante (1853-1935) | Invalido del arte, 1895 | Museo Nacional del Prado
A street violinist serving as a reflection of urban society at the end of the 19th century.
The musical instrument is depicted in some detail, thus, allowing the viewer to study it.
This work took part in the 1895 National Exhibition of Fine Arts, where it was awarded a third-place medal.| Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Vicente Palmaroli | En vue, 1880 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Established in Paris in 1873, Vicente Palmaroli developed a genre painting that brought him extraordinary success.
This refined panel, the most refined version of a theme he repeated on several occasions, is a reflection on the summers he spent in the French town of Trouville-sur-Mer (Normandy), and of the social sophistication of the environment in which he found himself.
Vicente Palmaroli (1834-1896) | En vue, 1880 | Museo Nacional del Prado
The elegant and stylish young woman is depicted in the moment that she has abandoned her reading to gaze through her binoculars.
The black of the binoculars and of the parasol she is holding contrasts with the range of pastel tones that dominates the composition, giving the work a delicate, precious character.
The mood is enhanced by the rapid brushstrokes, finely layered, reminiscent of the sketches made à plein air.| Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
María Luisa de la Riva | Flower Stall, 1887 | Museo Nacional del Prado
María Luisa de la Riva (1865-1926) | Flower Stall, 1887 | Museo Nacional del Prado
María Luisa de la Riva y Callol-Muñoz (1865-1926), one of the most renowned women painters of her time in Spain, presented this piece at the Paris Salon of 1885.
Although her speciality was flower painting, here she introduced what is almost a touch of local colour in the figure of a florist, who poses alongside her wares as if she too were one more flower.
Her presence recalls the modest jobs that awaited hard-up women who lacked any proper professional training, as denounced by Pardo Bazán. | Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Raphael | The Holy Family under an Oak Tree, 1518 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Leaning on a classical ruin, Saint Joseph looks at the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child in her lap. Jesus, in turn, is receiving a roll with the words Ecce Agnus Dei from Saint John.
This Latin inscription meaning Lamb of God refers to the Passion of Christ, who sacrifices himself, just as lambs were sacrified by the Jews, in order to save humanity from sin.
The oak tree standing behind the main group gives its name to the work and separates the figures from the background landscape and the ruins of the Caracalla Baths on the left.
Raphael (1483-1520) | The Holy Family under an Oak Tree, 1518 | Museo Nacional del Prado
The composition of this work was drawn by Rafael, who probably also made a first sketch, but it would be retouched and finished by Giulio Romano.
We can see its similarity to the composition of The Pearl, also by Raphael, in the importance given to the landscape and the artist´s interest in contrasting light.
But the manner of grouping the figures is different: here they are arranged diagonally, rather than in pyramid form.
In 1640, Niccolò Ludovissi gave this work to Philip IV (1605-1665) and it is listed as being in the Monastery of El Escorial in 1667.| Source: © Museo Nacional del Prado
Miguel Carbonell Selva | Death of Sappho, 1881 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Miguel Carbonell Selva (1854-1896) | Death of Sappho, 1881 | Museo Nacional del Prado
In a painting that goes by the title Safo, by Miguel Carbonel Selva, dated 1881, we see the figure of Sappho at the moment when she is about to leap to her death, plunging into the sea from the heights of Leukas.
Her death is timed to happen at sunset, and the timing is the same in other renditions as well.
Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci | The Mona Lisa, 1507-1516 | Museo Nacional del Prado
The Prado Mona Lisa is a painting by the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci and depicts the same subject and composition as Leonardo's better known Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris.
The Prado Mona Lisa has been in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain since 1819, but was considered for decades a relatively unimportant copy.
Following its restoration in 2012, however, the Prado's Mona Lisa has come to be understood as the earliest known studio copy of Leonardo's masterpiece.
Workshop of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) | The Mona Lisa, 1507-1516 | Museo Nacional del Prado
Although there are dozens of surviving copies of the Mona Lisa from the 16th and 17th centuries, the Prado's Mona Lisa may have been painted simultaneously by a student of Leonardo in the same studio where he painted his own Mona Lisa, so it is said to be the copy with the most historical value.
Among the pupils of Leonardo, Salaì or Francesco Melzi are the most plausible authors of the Prado's version, though other experts argue that the painting could have been executed by one of Leonardo's Spanish students. | Source: © Wikipedia
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