First impressions - el Museo Del Prado

Got to the hotel after a long red-eye flight and was promptly told by the folks at the front desk that they didn’t have rooms for us and we had to come back in 4 hours. Ouch. People smell when they spend 12-plus hours in airplanes and airports, and considering how many people were wearing masks because of Swine Flu fears, it would’ve been really, really nice to shower before venturing out in public… But c’est la vie. Rosalie and I dropped our luggage off, got into a taxi, and spent a few hours strolling through parks and museums on a gorgeous spring day in Madrid…











Spent the better part of the morning wandering through el Museo del Prado
contemplating pre-Reformation Christian art by the likes of El Greco
Imperialism is impossible without disseminating impressive iconography
Half a millennium later these are still visions masses flock to see
Rapturous arrays of portraits documenting the nobility of a distant age
captured for eternity and framed in oil paint cages
bloodlines’ memories
five centuries worth of luminaries
scenes from antiquity and scripture
the politically corrupt juxtaposed with the spiritually pure
each work is a reference point, a collector’s piece
infused with the meaning and the values the artist released
into the canvas and out from the ink
you miss the resurrection if you stop to think
blink and the beauty may dissipate
or maybe the consciousness congeals and endure
i stand amidst scenes of Venus and Adonis
tangling their limbs amid the warring fates
i wonder about the intentions of gods changing states
i ruminate on beauty as a lure
I contemplate how Christians regard JC as a cure
Circling from one room through the next
some of these nudes seem so de-sexed...
such detached debauchery
not delicate but robust bones
halfway to obese muscle tone
perhaps the prudes patronized these painters
to produce privately owned visions of the Passion scenes
perhaps to contemplate what sin means
when it stares at you through oils
in the presence of great art something within uncoils
These canvasses are transformational to witness and behold
Masters rearranging perspectives to reaffirm faith’s role
A cubist Christ is cut viciously with bloody lances
As the Virgin Mary is beset with evil-faced cherubs that frolic and dance
I am discovering something decisive here already
A treasure trove of a nobility's demons
rubbing up against restless fascist ghosts,
A heritage of subversive Moorish influences
imported from the Mediterranean coast
the Catholicism alone remains constant
as the words of possessed playrights fill the air like confetti
A heady blend of poetry and paint
the architecture seemingly suffused with saints
as stubborn bulls bleed thickly & die slow, sensuous deaths
in this thin Castilian air
I can finally catch my breath...

Here's a very small sampling of some of what we saw, minus countless Goyas and innumerable portraits...just a few of the pieces I found online right away...
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Picture Gallery
by David Teniers II (1610-1690)











The Forge of Vulcan
by Diego Velazquez (1599-1660)











Agnus Dei
by Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664)










The Crucifixion
by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (aka El Greco) (1541-1614)
The crucified Christ is in the company of the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and St. John the Baptist. The exaggerated spiritual atmosphere that El Greco creates in this painting is remarkable. The elongated bodies and the careful composition of different but simultaneous actions proves El Greco´s unquestionable imagination.

The Resurrection
by El Greco














Venus & Adonis
by Titian (1488-1576)











And my personal favorite piece of impropriety, a painting entitled "Saint Bernard and the Virgin) by Alonso Cano (1601-1667)...the image is of the Virgin Mary shooting a stream of breast milk into a penitent St.Bernard's mouth... hmmmm...