Free View from the Top: Palace of Cibeles

5/30/12 - Plaza de Cibeles, 1

The Palace of Cibeles (1919) must be one of the most conspicuous buildings in Madrid.  A striking, white confection, it looms over the Fountain of Cibeles (1794) and dominates the Plaza. Since the 1970s, the city's biggest celebrations have taken place in front of the Palace, including the victories of the Real Madrid football team. 

Observation deck is located on the central tower (8th floor).
Enter building through main (arched) doorway.

During the twentieth century, the building was called the Palace of Communications, and served as the main office of the postal, telegraph and telephone services. Impressive mail chutes for all Spain's provinces still line the side of the building that faces Paseo del Prado.

Today, the Palace of Cibeles is both the seat of Madrid's government and a newly-minted cultural space.  In the past decade it underwent extensive restoration.

Photo exhibit on the restoration process, 2008-2011

As I discovered this morning, the main (second) floor is now completely open to the public--walk right in and place your bag in the x-ray machine. Take a look around, visit the cafe, use the restrooms, or fire up your laptop in the wifi zone.  There is also a restaurant and a terrace bar on the 6th floor.

Taking a breather in the public lounge/ wifi zone, Palace of Cibeles

Terrace bar, viewed from the observation deck.

The observation deck or "mirador" has been open since 2011: hours 10:30-1:00 & 4:30-7:30 (closed Mondays and holidays).  Visitors must ask for a ticket at the coat-check counter on the second floor and then ascend to the 6th floor at the appointed time.  I arrived at 11:20 and received a ticket for 11:30.

Most people opt to ascend the final 88 steps on foot--there are more views along the way--but an elevator is provided for those who need one.

Splendid 360-degree view from the 8th floor deck

On the way back down, you can explore the interior . . .

Original tiled marble staircase

Glass block floors

View of main floor 

. . . before continuing on your way. The Naval Musuem is right next door, and the Prado Museum just a few blocks further.  Outside, dozens of chirping school children, dressed in summer hues, strolled down the shady avenue.

Paseo del Prado, in the merry merry month of May

The Hermitage at the Prado Museum: Scythian Bling v. Malevich's Black Square

The Prado Museum / Museo del Prado
1/24/12 - Paseo del Prado

Prado Museum ticket entrance

Ancient gold ornaments, dug up from burial mounds in Siberia and the Black Sea coast, form the glittering  center of an exhibit on loan to the Prado from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  The Scythians, a nomadic Eurasian people from the fifth to third centuries BCE, wore exquisite belt buckles the size of iPads.  Their posture must have been exemplary.  Another dazzler, created in the 4th century BCE and described as an "earring with pendant element in the form of a boat," might just blow your mind.

The Hermitage has loaned over 170 objects, including sculpture, royal jewels, paintings, decorative art, and clothing from the Russian imperial court.  Caravaggio, Matisse, Rembrandt, Rubens, Fabergé, Bernini, Monet, and Kandinsky all make an appearance.  If you don't look closely, you might miss the foppish shoes on Henry Danver, Earl of Danby, as painted by Van Dyck in the late 1630s: kitten heels, with a burst of ruffle at the instep. One of Kazimir Malevich's four Black Square paintings from the early 20th century hangs here as well, small and mute in the presence of so many riches.

Matisse at the Prado until 25 March 2012

I'm halfway through Robert K. Massie's new biography of Catherine the Great, the obscure German princess who came to rule Russia from 1762 to 1796.  Catherine collected many of the artworks now housed in the Hermitage.  (She also collected Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Crimea). I enjoyed seeing the full-length portrait of the aging Empress by Giovanni Battisti Lampi (1793), as well as the filigree Chinese boxes from her dressing-table set. One of them takes the form of a crab on a leaf.

Cafe Prado

After a stop in the museum cafe...

I viewed a small exhibit about the re-discovery of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting, The Wine of Saint Martin's Day.  During restoration work in 2010-11, the painting was attributed to Bruegel when his signature and the date (1566 or 1567) appeared in the lower left corner.  A brief slide-show documents the restoration and identification process.  The subject of the painting is curious.  Did the 16th-century Dutch feed wine to babies?  Bruegel takes his subjects to task. Then, as now, human foibles gave rise to spectacular works art.

The Hermitage in the Prado and Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Wine of Saint Martin's Day run until 25 March 2012.

Heaven & Earth on Sunday: Goya, Roast Chicken, River

Goya Pantheon, The Church of San Antonio de la Florida
1/8/12 – Glorieta de San Antonio de la Florida, 5

One of Goya's angels

The artist Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), or simply Goya, is growing on me.  He painted the lovely ceiling in the Church of San Antonio de la Florida at the height of his creative powers, in 1798.

According to a pamphlet for sale (1 Euro, 60 pp., available in English), this riverside neighborhood of Madrid has a long history of devotion to St. Anthony of Padova, the Patron Saint of unmarried girls.  On his feast day June 13, maidens arrived at St. Anthony’s shrine to ask for a husband.  They dropped thirteen pins into the holy water and dipped their hand to see how many pins would stick to it.  The number foretold their suitors for the year.  One can see the holy water font where this activity once took place, in the vestibule of the Church of San Antonio.  The neoclassical-style building was a royal chapel until 1881, when it became a parish church.  To protect Goya’s frescoes, the church turned into a museum in 1929.  An identical church—for worship and yearly romantic divination—was built next door.  

Goya's tomb and his frescoes lie within this neoclassical church

Goya died in France, but his remains were transferred to San Antonio de la Florida in 1919 (mysteriously, his skull was missing).  Thus, in one visit, homage can be paid to both artist and his creation.  

The frescoes are remarkable for several reasons.  Some elements of Goya’s style prefigure Impressionism, not to mention Goya’s creepy series of Black Paintings in the Prado.  The highest point, the cupola, contains an earthly instead of a heavenly scene.  Goya depicts a story from St. Anthony’s life, when the Saint’s own father was wrongly accused of murder.  St. Anthony brings the corpse to life—a miracle—for questioning, and the dead man proclaims the father’s innocence.  Onlookers in the scene are dressed as Goya’s contemporaries, from beggars to gossiping ladies.  The luminous angels that decorate the vaults have been excoriated for their secular appearance—they might be beauties of Madrid high society, in sashes and diaphanous dresses. 

After admiring Goya, we stepped across the street to the venerable cider-and-chicken house, Casa Mingo, a fixture of the neighborhood since 1888.*  

Casa Mingo, side view

Casa Mingo serves its own fermented cider, along with spit-roasted chicken, in a bustling restaurant.  On a Sunday, try to arrive before 2 p.m., when the line for tables can spill out the door.  Son 1 was intrigued by the sparse occupational duties of the chicken guy—impale, stack, roast in flames, remove. Three chickens served the 5 of us. 

Casa Mingo dining room

Afterwards, a stroll back to the train station, along Madrid's Manzanares River, was just the ticket.   

 

Manzanares River

In winter, the banks are almost empty. A lone fisherman cast his line.

 

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*This expedition to Goya’s pantheon and Casa Mingo was first suggested to me by Kay, a long-time Madrid aficionada and Madison, Wisconsin resident.

The Face of a Castrato, the Bite of Fiery Serpents

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando / Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

10/25/11 - Alcalá, 13
The face on the wall of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts tells a story.  That much is evident at first glance.  Red lips, beauty mark à la Cindy Crawford, dark eyes gazing with feminine allure directly at the viewer.  The c.1750-52 portrait by Italian artist Jacopo Amigoni depicts “Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli”—rock-star castrato of eighteenth century Europe.  The celebrated voice of Farinelli was credited with curing the melancholia of Spain’s King Phillip V.  The singer came to Madrid for a gig and spent over two decades here as a royal favorite (1737-1759), organizing operas and court spectacles, and singing duets with music-crazed members of the royal family.  Elsewhere in the museum, two paintings capture the elaborate stage sets of Farinelli’s operatic productions.  

Portrait of Farinelli, c. 1750-52

The Royal Academy houses three floors of paintings and sculpture, mostly Spanish, Italian and Flemish from the XV to the XX centuries.  Among them one finds a stunning “Last Supper” (Tintoretto); several canvases by a master of human flesh (Peter Paul Rubens); a portrait of King Carlos III (Andres de la Calleja) that is the spitting image of Rubalcaba, candidate for President of Spain in next month’s election; a portrait of Barbara de Braganza (M. Van Loo), whose diamond-studded hair-do can’t hide her double chin; an exciting view of Mount Vesuvius erupting (Antonio Carnicero) while a lone artist calmly sketches in the foreground and others look on in wonder; and a small, creepy painting by Alessandro Magnasco, showing “A Community of Capucin Friars” as they participate in a public act of self-punishment, or capitulo de culpas.

Excellent descriptive labels in both Spanish and English accompany the majority of works.  I would have been most grateful, though, for a label on Jose Leonardo’s shudder-worthy scenario of my nightmares: “The Metal Serpent” (NOT pictured), in which writhing snakes bite half-naked people with tenacious glee.*

Guiseppe Arcimboldo, "The Spring"

Numerous works by Goya in the collection prove why it’s not a good idea to start with his Black Paintings and work backwards from there (see my earlier visit to the Prado Museum).  I especially enjoyed the self-portrait, the only image of Goya wearing his notorious hat with candles, allowing him to paint into the dusky twilight hours.  

Finally, a visit to the Royal Academy is not complete without a careful look at Guiseppe Arcimboldo’s “The Spring,” c. 1563.  The only Arcimboldo painting in Spain, it’s a gorgeous riot of flowers and vegetables, forming the profile of a smiling man.  Lettuce leaves for shoulders, rose cheeks, and petal skin.  His eye’s a violet, sweet of Madrid. 

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*It’s a scene from the Old Testament, Numbers 21, I later learned.  The Israelites, frustrated by their long march in the desert, started to “murmur” amongst themselves.  God punished this act of murmuring with flying fiery serpents.  Then Moses revived the victims with a metal serpent.  Yes, it all makes sense in the end.

The Creep Factor - Selected Works at the Prado

The Prado Museum / Museo del Prado
08/06/11 - Calle Ruiz de Alarcón, 23

With the Professor, S1 and S2 in tow, we opted for tapas rather than dinner, including: Goya’s Black Paintings, a few rooms of El Grecos, and Bosch’s utterly insane painting The Garden of Earthly Delights.  In other words, enough to live on for several weeks.

El Greco.  Let me unleash this sacrilegious thought right away.  As a child of a border town (San Diego), El Greco’s color schemes remind me of the black velvet paintings hawked in Tijuana tourist shops of the 1970s.  Even with our unformed and barely critical minds we derided those velvet paintings as tacky; for a brief moment in the 1990s they may have earned a certain ironic cachet.  But what I love about El Greco is his color, unlike anything being done at the time.  A black velvet El Greco would make my day.*

Outside the Prado: Goya the artist, Ritz the hotel

Goya. Between 1819 and 1823, he filled a large room of his house with dark, dark images meant only for his own perusal.  The 14 paintings were discovered after Goya’s death, painted directly onto the walls. The house and its contents then changed hands several times.  One owner tried to auction off the paintings in the 1870s, but found no buyers.  The paintings were finally donated to the Prado, and were transferred to canvas.  For S1 and S2, “Saturn Devouring His Son” is now seared into their brains.  And that is what art is all about.

Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.  Thank you, reference source of the lazy and undisciplined, Wikipedia: “…in no other painting does he achieve such complexity of meaning or such vivid imagery….20th-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.”  Hieronymus, what more can 21^st-century art historians say? 

*Not so sacrilegious after all.  From Wikipedia entry on “Black Velvet Painting,” for what it’s worth: “Black velvet paintings originate in ancient Kashmir, the homeland of the fabric. These original paintings were generally religious and portrayed the icons of the Caucasus region which were painted by Russian Orthodox priests.  Marco Polo and others introduced black velvet paintings to Western Europe, and some of these early works still hang in the Vatican Museums.” Accessed 19 August 2011.