Motorhomes and urban areas don't mix. If we visit a major city we try to find a nearby town with good public transport links to the urban centre. Madrid is well served in this respect because of Spain's excellent high speed train network, both Toledo and Segovia are possible places to stay even though both are some distance from the capital. In the end we used the campsite at Aranjuez. The town is connected to the Madrid metro, though it's closer to the city than the other two it took longer. Though the metro is inexpensive, regular and comfortable it's definitely not 'high speed'.
I'm the one who wanted to visit Madrid. It's not because I have a strong desire to experience the city, what I want to see are two paintings - 'Las Meninas' by Velasquez and Picasso's 'Guernica'. Sadly they are in different galleries. It's not really possible to 'do' two major galleries in one day. I decided to visit the Prado and see 'Las Meninas'. Maybe we'll return another year to see 'Guernica' in the modern art museum. I appreciate Gill's forbearance in this, she finds the stultifying air and peculiar reverential atmosphere you get in major galleries hard to bear. I do too, but if you want to see a particular picture in situ then you have no option but to put up with it.
Despite the campsite receptionist's dire warnings walking to the station was no problem whatsoever. Most of the way we followed the river on a pleasant footpath The only hazard were gaggles of geese who seemed reluctant to budge from our path.
We reached the centre of Aranjuez, it's about a 20 minute walk. The road to the station passed the town's famous palace. It was redesigned in the early Eighteenth century to emulate Versailles. I'm not a fan of grandiose Baroque piles, we've seen a few over the years, not just Versailles, but Caserta near Naples and Mafra north of Lisbon.
They're all variations on the same theme, designed to assert autocratic power, grandiose expressions of Enlightenment despotism. Like Gothic cathedrals they may be magnificent architecturally but viewed politically they should be regarded as instruments of oppression.
It took a little over half an hour to get to Madrid. We alighted at Atocha station. At its heart the building is a magnificent Modernista masterpiece.
The original interior is somewhat hidden these days by modern additions and re-modelling. It's very easy to get lost, which we promptly did.
We emerged next to what looked like a big palace topped by enormous equestrian statuary above the portico. It turned out to be the Ministry of Agriculture. The minister's job may be mundane, endless meetings about net zero and plasticulture, but the job does come with an office worthy of the Sun King. We consulted Google maps, fortuitously the Ministry of Agriculture happened to be at the south end of Paseo de Prado, exactly where we needed to be, the museum was about a ten minute walk up the boulevard past the Botanical Gardens.
Gill had pre-booked the tickets on-line. This didn't make finding the way-in any easier. The facade of the Prado is about 300m long, there are entrances on each side of the building. Of course we went to the wrong one - for school parties and tour groups only. When we eventually found the correct one at the opposite end we were faced with a cordoned off maze, like you get at a Springsteen concert where tens of thousands of over-excited fans need careful management to avoid a crush. However we were the only punters in sight outnumbered by the neatly uniformed jobs-worths on hand to control the invisible hoard. We still failed to find the way in without help. Even though we had e-tickets we had to go to the ticket desk to swap them for paper ones and present our passports (which fortuitously Gill had in her bag) to prove we actually were aged over 65 and eligible for a €3 reduction. The entry procedure still was not quite complete, off we went again outside, navigated another empty maze then re-entered through the main door. After emptying our pockets and putting both ourselves and our bags through an airport style scanner we were finally OKed to look at the paintings.
It's not just the Prado, every major art gallery I've ever visited - the Uffizi, Louvre, Rijksmuseum, Moma, - they've all been a trial, too much to take in, exhausting. The secret is not to try to see everything, to go with a plan and ours, on paper at least, seemed modest. Look at one picture by Velasquez - 'Las Meninas' then concentrate on the Prado's incomparable collection of Goya's.
In reality no matter how much pre-planning you do big gallery behemoths always spring some wearisome surprise. The Prado sprung one one me straightaway. I decided to find the loo, not easy, the institution is much too highbrow to signpost its toilets plainly. I asked. They were in the basement, off a gloomy but spacious arcaded central space. The central area was cordoned off, occupied by a Steinway concert grand. A young woman, a music student I presume, was crouched over the keyboard playing a slow, melancholy melody, a handful of people had gathered to listen, they had adopted their best rapt appreciation demeanour. By the time I returned from my more basic mission the piece was reaching its finale, spectacular runs, cacophonous arpeggios crashing around the confines of the enclosed basement. Concert grands are designed for somewhere the size of the Albert Hall, the basement was about forty feet across I would guess, the piano was deafening, the space weirdly echoey, the effect nerve-wracking. It had a disorienting effect on me, I couldn't remember which of the arches encircling the room led to the stairs. Finally I emerged and was glad to find Gill. "What on earth was that noise?" she enquired. "I think it might have been Chopin" I replied weakly.
Las Meninas was unmissable, partly because it's a large canvas with a striking composition, but mainly because a small scrum of admirers blocked out the lower third of the picture. Rather than observing the painting itself they all concentrated on their tour guide. He had his back to the painting explaining to the gaggle in front of him why the picture was important. I have no idea if what he was said was sensible because both the voluble guide and his attentive audience were Chinese.
For €10 euros less you can hire an MP3 audio guide. I can see that it would be useful if you didn't know much about art. Alternatively, you can book an individual local expert, they rent their services for four hours, which is probably about the time you would need if you were going to fully appreciate the Prado's impressive collection. Again this seems to be pitched at American tourists with more money than sense - the price, a mere $505.
I first came across Las Meninas over half a century ago when I read an essay about the painting while making notes for my A level Art course. Unusually 30% of the marks came from a written History of Art paper. This proved fortuitous as my drawing and painting skills proved somewhat rudimentary but I discovered I was pretty good at teaching myself Art History. Mr Fawcett, my teacher, had little interest in the theory side of things and basically gave us a list of artists and movements from the Renaissance and Baroque era to research in the school library. I discovered I loved looking at paintings, which was tricky given I lived in a small market town, miles from anywhere, in north Northumberland. The Duke of Northumberland's stately pile in the town had a couple of Turners and a Claude Lorraine, then I learned that the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh had a more extensive collection. My Dad was from Scotland and didn't need much encouragement to visit Edinburgh which was about 90 miles away, so doable as a day trip. In Scotland's National Gallery I was able to see many different paintings from different eras and a mixture of all sorts of styles.
The painting which stood out in my mind afterwards was Velasquez's 'Old Woman frying eggs'. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras there was a strict hierarchy so far as painting was concerned. The most admired works were large scale religious cycles, altarpieces or 'history paintings' depicting significant political events - battles, peace treaties or coronations for example. Next came portraiture - usually of the great and the good, then landscape, still life and so called 'genre' painting. The latter might be characterised as 'scenes from ordinary life'. This had its roots in scenes depicting seasonal rural life in medieval Cathedral sculpture and manuscripts. It emerged into mainstream painting in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century. The works of Pieter Breughel are a good example. However peasant life was often depicted in a humourous way, mocked as much as celebrated, or a moral point made about the importance of hard work or the dangers of drunkenness or lechery.
Velasquez's 'Old woman frying eggs'. affords the two figures - an old woman and a teenage boy - equal dignity as if the artist were depicting an aristocrat, a cardinal or a saint. At the time this was revolutionary. Technically too, I cannot think of another artist from the early 16th Century who matches Velasquez's facility to render a scene with near photographic acuity. Vermeer perhaps, but Velasquez painted this a decade before the Dutch master was born, moreover, aged 20 he was barely out of his apprenticeship.
Unexpectedly It was Velasquez's earliest work that I found myself thinking about when I came face to face with 'Las Meninas', completed almost four decades later. I recalled reading that it had been called 'the first modern painting', but couldn't remember by whom. Chatgpt to the rescue!
In his 1966 book The Order of Things (Les mots et les choses), Foucault opens with a long, detailed analysis of Las Meninas. He argues that the painting radically rethinks representation—blurring the boundaries between artist, subject, and viewer—and in doing so anticipates key concerns of modern art.
Why Foucault saw it as “modern”
Self-awareness of painting: The work reflects on its own act of creation (Velázquez paints himself painting).
Viewer involvement: The spectator is implicated—standing where the king and queen would be.
Ambiguity of reality vs representation: The mirror, canvas, and gazes create uncertainty about what is “real.”
All of this is true, but what enabled Velasquez to play games with reality was his mastery of realism, something that was evident even in his early work, so there is a direct link between 'The old woman cooking eggs' and the unusually informal scene of courtly life found in 'Las Meninas'.
It's a little strange looking at a painting for real that you have known from photographs for decades. In this size matters. Reproduced in a book all paintings can be taken-in at a glance, whether it's one of Correggio's monumental trompe-l'œil domes or a postcard sized Turner watercolour. Las Meninas is a large canvas - 3.2m x 2.8m, the foreground figures are almost lifesize. So it's only possible to take in the entire composition if you stand in the middle of the big room it occupies. This proved tricky. The Prado was busy, most of the time a crowd obscured the lower part of the painting.,
When you join the gaggle your eye has to range across the painting taking in details here and there. Velasquez's scintillating realism is evident, but only in parts - the Infanta, her ladies in waiting (las meninas), the court fool, the family dog and the artist's face are all rendered with characteristic verisimilitude.
However the parts of the big canvas are painted more sketchily. The smudged image of the King and Queen in the square mirror on the back wall which forms the painting's focal point is not in itself unusual in terms of technique; it simply applies the principles of aerial perspective found in landscape to an interior scene. However iconographically as a royal portrait it's revolutionary.
In 1659 King Phillip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria ruled the first truly global empire, their dominions stretching from the tip of Argentina to Mexico in the West and the Philippines and Borneo in the East. Yet in Las Meninas the royal couple are reduced to faint reflections in the background. So who is the subject of the painting? It's a question that has been long debated - the Infanta, the ladies in waiting, Velasquez - the artist as master of ceremonies? Are we, the onlookers actually the main subject, standing in the space occupied by the royal couple glimpsed in the mirror?
All of this I knew beforehand, but seeing Las Meninas for real still sprung some surprises. I noticed some details in the scene that are rendered more sketchily than others. For example whereas the artist's face is painted carefully his hand holding the brush is suggested rather than depicted clearly.
Similarly, the pageboy is sketched in the bottom right of the painting caught in the act of cheekily poking the family dog with his foot. Does Velasquez's loose handling here signify movement? Thes effect is are reminiscent of a late Victorian family photograph where the limitations of early box cameras demanded subjects stay stock still, but they never quite managed it and so odd detail here and became blurred.
I was delighted to see Las Meninas for real, even if it had taken me over half a century to manage it. I do think it is one of European civilisations more 'radical' works of art, like 'The Tempest', 'Pride and Prejudice', Beethoven's late Quartets, Picasso's 'Les Demoiselles de Avignon', or Eliot's 'The Wasteland', works that seem ahead of their time, genre-changers that redefine what is possible or acceptable. I think Foucault correctly asserted that 'Las Meninas' should be regarded as the first 'modern' painting. What makes it remarkable is that the work is centuries ahead of its time. When critics in the late Nineteenth century attacked Manet's work, such as 'Dejeuner sur l' herbe', 'Olympia', or 'Bar at Folies Bergere' as looking partly unfinished, or taking liberties with compositional decorum, these innovations can be traced back to La Meninas painted over two hundred years earlier.
We headed to see Goya's work next. They're spread over three rooms, two adjacent to one another and a third in the basement. We found them all eventually, the Prado is a bit of a maze.
In Goya's early portraits Velasquez's influence is evident. Both painters are capable of impeccable realism, however their aesthetics are quite different. Velasquez's eye is cool and analytical, Goya's more emotionally engaging, an odd mix of empathy and edginess that at times can be unsettling.
In the portrait of the Duke of Osuna and his family the handling is so precise the result looks hyperreal. The children exude saccerine innocence, a posed perfection that feels almost spooky.
Close by we came across Goya's celebrated group portrait of Charles IV and his family. The painting acknowledges it's illustrious predecessor - Las Meninas' - by placing the artist and canvas on the left of the scene. Here, however, the King and his family are placed centre stage. The work hardly exudes royal pomp and circumstance. They look like a motley crew, diminished by their sumptuous attire rather than elevated by it. Not everyone is looking in the same direction, one princess glances behind her, others stare distractedly to the left. It looks like a big family group photos taken at a wedding when people who haven't met for years and never got on anyway are corralled into a gaggle, the result emanating awkwardness rather than togetherness.
Goya makes no effort to idealise the royal personages, he depicts them 'warts and all'. The portraits are so shockingly true to life that it has led commentators to ask if the intention was satirical rather than celebratory.
By now it was early afternoon and the Prado was packed. To protect paintings, I presume, the temperature and humidity in the gallery is strictly controlled. When crowded the place becomes unpleasantly stuffy. We figured that most people would be traipsing through the place room by room chronologically, so the galleries in the basement with Goya's works dating from the early nineteenth century might be less crowded. The ruse proved partly right, the rooms were busy but felt airier.
The works were split between two medium sized galleries. One contained commissioned paintings from the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the other Goya's so called ' black paintings' produced as murals in the house he bought in the 1820s. These intensively personal works were never intended for exhibition but were removed and mounted on canvas after the artist's death.
Two big canvases dominated the first room. They commemorate the popular uprising in Madrid in May 1808 against the Bourbon dynasty installed by Napoleon during the Peninsula War. The unrest on May 2nd of May is depicted on one painting and the other shows the bloody aftermath on the following day when score of citizens were shot by firing squad by French soldiers.
It's a haunting image. Kenneth Clarke commented that it was revolutionary both in style and content. Compared to the restrained aristocratic portraits that typified Goya's early work, the raw energy, political engagement and popularist sentiment of 'May 3rd.' reveals how his career spanned the cusp of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries and the transition from effervescent Rococo to a dark, brooding Romanticism.
Goya's last works, dubbed his 'black paintings' occupy the adjacent room. Painted in the early 1820s they originally were murals painted in his house, personal works rather than public. That art might be about personal expression rather than public statement is a Central tenet of Romanticism. They are traumatic works the product of a troubled mind haunted by the violence and upheaval of the Napoleonic period and reflecting the ill health and deafness that Goya suffered as he aged. It's interesting to reflect on the parallel with Beethoven's late Quartets which are equally 'difficult".
Some of the paintings reflect a preoccupation with witchcraft...
Others depict old age in a wild, sketchy style, its monochromatic palette presaging Expressionism...
The horror of 'Saturn devouring his son' is deeply disturbing. The painter, who in his youth exuded a sunny humane disposition, seems to have been overwhelmed by dark thoughts and haunted by visions inhumanity in his old age.
Though these paintings are intensely personal they also mirror broader cultural trends. Grimm's fairy tales and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were published in the decade previously. A few years later Edgar Allen Poe's spooky short stories appeared in American magazines. It seems an appetite for the uncanny and 'Gothic' prevailed across much of Western culture in the first few decades of the Nineteenth century.
We decided that we had seen enough. We set out to see Las Meninas and the Goya collection and that's exactly what we did. Time for lunch! There was an interesting looking café marked on Google maps about half a kilometre from the Prado.
Cafe Matilda is a small hipterish styled place that prides itself on providing 'homey' Spanish food freshly cooked in it's miniscule kitchen. The owner was very welcoming and accommodating. Given the place is situated between the Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, both visitors hotspots, then the Menú del día for €16 seemed remarkably good value.
Tortillas were on offer as a starter,...
for mains Gill chose beef stew, I went for jamon.
Dessert of the day was either a Basque cheesecake or creme caramel, Gill had the cheesecake and I chose the creme caramel - so we could share.
A glass of wine and a coffee afterwards was included in the price. Considering everything was made to order - unpretentious but delicious home style cookery - and given we were in the heart of a capital city, then Cafe Matilda offers an authentic contemporary style Spanish food at an affordable price. My desire to see Guernica for real in the Reina Sofía Museum means we will need return to Madrid again sometime. Cafe Matilda joins our list of must return to eateries' dotted around Italy and Iberia.
The cafe was in a grid of smaller streets west of the Paseo del Prado in the Barrio de las Letras. The district looks as if it developed in the nineteenth century, but the old buildings are interspersed with modern ones. The area's former power station 'Central Del Mediodía' was converted into an arts centre about twenty years ago. The old and the new are combined spectacularly. The entire structure is suspended on girders to give the impression that the older building floats above the ground.
The gable end of the adjacent building has been converted into a vertical garden.
