Madrid: an historical description and handbook of the Spanish capital

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Claudio Coello was a native of Madrid, and the son of a Portuguese sculptor. Many of his paintings are to be seen at the Escorial, where he worked for seven years upon the famous “Santa Forma” in the Sacristia. It is said that Coello died broken-hearted from the chagrin of being superseded by Luca Giordano, the facile Italian painter.

With the advent of Giordano the essential realism of Spanish painting began to decline. “In Madrid, imitation was the death-blow of reality,” writes C. Gasquoine Hartley in her “Record of Spanish Painting.” Many minor artists arose in Castile in this period of decline. They were followers of Giordano and other Italians, and for the greater part devoid of originality. The influence of Mengs was another menace to the development of a purely national school of painting in Spain, and the unimportant work of Bayeu, Maella, Barnuevo and others shows the waning of Castilian art.

A revival came with Francisco Goya, an ardent genius, who sprang from the people, and came to Madrid as a student. Goya studied the masterpieces in the Madrid galleries, visited Italy, and returned to the Castilian capital at about the age of thirty. Up to this time, Goya had painted but few pictures. Now he began his revolutionary career as an artist, and won fame, which has spread throughout the cultured world since his death. He soon became popular in Madrid. His daring and his pungent satire rather attracted than repelled the King, the clergy, and the society of the city. He painted the life of his day with a vivid, unsparing brush; he took liberties with even sacred institutions, and derided ancient and effete traditions.

Under Charles IV., Goya was appointed Royal Painter. He was a favourite of Queen Maria Luisa, the Duchess of Alba, and the Countess Benavente, and he enjoyed the confidence of the King. And yet Goya was a rebel in his opinions and in his art, and his royal portraits are characterised by a brutal frankness. In his tapestry designs, his scenes of Madrid life, his bull-fighting incidents, his portraits, and his “caprichos,” he displays the versatility of a remarkable mind. Goya worked rapidly, and his output was enormous.

The celebrated “Dos de Mayo,” a terribly realistic war picture, together with “An Episode in the French Invasion,” may be studied in the Royal Gallery at Madrid. In the Prado collection there are several of Goya’s royal portraits—“The Family of Charles IV.,” with its unflattering realism; “Charles IV. on foot”; “Queen Maria Luisa”; “The Infante Don Carlos, son of Carlos IV.”; and others of great interest. More of Goya’s works may be inspected in the Academy of Fine Arts at Madrid. These include a portrait of the painter by himself, a bull-fighting scene, an episode of the Inquisition, a procession, and other characteristic pictures.

When Joseph Bonaparte ruled in Madrid, Goya took the oath of fealty, and painted the usurper’s portrait. In 1814, the painter became a courtier of Ferdinand, and was pardoned for his disloyalty on the grounds that he was “a great artist.” A few years later, his wife Josefa died, and Goya, who was deaf, and bereft of many of his friends, seems to have wearied of the life of the Court at Madrid, and yearned for change and travel.

In 1822, he obtained the royal permission to visit France. He went first to Paris, where he was hailed by the young French painters, afterwards residing at Bordeaux, where he stayed for nearly five years before returning to Spain. In 1828, his restless spirit passed away.

Perhaps the finest of Goya’s portraits are those of the king and queen on horseback. It was Gautier who remarked of Goya that at times “he paints with the delicacy of that delicious Gainsborough, at other times he has the solid touch of Rembrandt.” Goya was one of the first of the moderns, an artist who broke from cramping tradition, and forced his way to eminence and even to popularity in a few years.

There is a long gap in the art history of Spain between Francisco Goya and Fortuny. Mariano Fortuny was not a native of Madrid, but he came to the city in 1866. There are two of his pictures in the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid. One is a sketch for the “Battle of Tetuan,” and the other “The Queen Regent with Doña Isabel exhorting the Spanish Troops to withstand the Carlists.” Between Goya and Fortuny there are no links in the historic succession of artists, unless we regard Rosales and Galofré as national in the tendency of their art. There are two of Rosales’ pictures in the Museum of Modern Art in Madrid.

The National Museum of Painting and Sculpture, otherwise the Museo del Prado, was founded in the reign of Charles III., and planned by Villanueva. The work was interrupted by the war with France, and finished in the time of Ferdinand VII. Architecturally considered, the exterior of the museum is handsome and massive. Its chief defect is the poor quality of the light within. Its glory is the vast treasure of masterpieces of all the schools of Europe.