Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

The conquered turn against those still weaker than themselves, or in their turn win lesser victories over their conquerors. It is a struggle of the miracles of art, in the midst of which one’s restless soul trembles like a flame fanned by a thousand gusts of wind, and one’s heart expands with a sense of pride in the power of the genius of man.

When the first enthusiasm has subsided one begins to admire. In the midst of an army of such artists, each of whom would require a volume for himself, I restrict myself to the Spaniards, and among these to the painters who aroused within me the most profound admiration and whose canvases I remember most distinctly. The most recent of these is Goya, who was born toward the end of the last century. As a painter he is the most Spanish of the Spaniards, the painter of toreros, of the people, of contrabandists, hags, and robbers, of the War of Independence, and of that old Spanish life which melted away before his very eyes. He was a fiery son of Arragon, of iron temper, passionately devoted to bull-fights, so that even in the closing years of his life, when he was living at Bordeaux, he was accustomed to come once a week to Madrid with no other reason than to witness those spectacles; and he would go back like an arrow, not even so much as saluting his friends. A genius rigorous, cynical, imperious, awe-inspiring—who in the heat of his violent inspirations would in a few moments cover a wall or a canvas with figures, giving the finishing touches with whatever came to hand—sponges, brooms, or sticks; who in sketching the face of a person whom he hated would insult it; who painted a picture as he would have fought a battle; very bold in composition, an original strong colorist, the creator of an inimitable style, with frightful shadows, hidden lights, and resemblances distorted and yet true to life. He was a great master in the expression of all terrible effects of anger, hate, desperation, and the thirst for blood; an athletic, turbulent, indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velasquez, fantastical like Hogarth, vigorous like Rembrandt, the last ruddy spark of Spanish genius. There are several of his paintings in the museum of Madrid,

and among them is a very large canvas representing the entire family of Charles IV. But the two paintings into which he put his whole soul are the French soldiers shooting the Spaniards on the second of May, and the fight of the people of Madrid with the Mamelukes of Napoleon, in which the figures are life-size. These are paintings which make one shudder. One cannot imagine anything more terrible, nor is it possible to give overbearing power a form more execrable, to desperation a more fearful appearance, or to the fury of a battle an expression of greater ferocity. In the first of these paintings there is a murky sky, the light of a lantern, a pool of blood, a confused mass of corpses, a crowd of men condemned to death, a row of French soldiers in the act of firing: in the other, bleeding horses, cavaliers dragged from their saddles, stabbed, trampled down, and mangled. What faces! what attitudes! One seems to hear the cries and see the blood run; the actual scene could not have been more horrible. Goya must have painted these pictures with flashing eyes and foaming mouth, with all the fury of a demoniac. It is the final point which painting can reach before it is transferred into action; beyond this point the brush is flung aside and the battle begins. Anything more terrible than these paintings must be slaughter; after these colors comes blood.

Of Ribera—whom we know also by the name of Spagnoletto—there are enough paintings to form a museum. They consist in great part of life-size figures of saints; a martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, full of figures; a colossal Prometheus chained to a rock. Other paintings of his are found in other museums, at the Escurial, and in the churches, for he was very productive and industrious, like almost all the Spanish artists. After seeing a painting of his, one recognizes all the others at a glance, nor is it necessary to look at them with the eye of a critic to do this. There are old emaciated saints with shaved heads and naked, so that one can count their veins; with hollow eyes, fleshless cheeks, furrowed brows, and sunken chests, through which one can see their ribs; arms and hands which are only skin and bones; bodies worn out and exhausted, clothed in rags—yellow with the deathly pallor of corpses, full of sores, and covered with flood; carcases which seem to have been just dragged from the tomb, bearing on their faces the impress of all the spasms of pain, torture, famine, and sleeplessness; figures from the anatomist’s table, from which you might study all the secrets of the human organism. Admirable? Yes, for boldness of design, for strength of color, and for the thousand other merits which won for Ribera the fame of a most powerful painter. But true and great art—ah, it is not that! In those faces there is none of that celestial light, that immortal ray of the soul, which reveals with sublime pathos, noble aspirations, those “subtle flashes” and “limitless desires”—that light which draws the eye from the sores and calls down the thought of heaven. There is only the crude suffering which causes repulsion and fear; there are only weariness of life and the presentiment of death; only that fleeting mortal life without a suggestion of the immortality drawing near. There is not one of those saints whose image one recalls with affection: one looks and is chilled at heart, but the heart beats none the quicker. Ribera never loved. Yet as I hurried through the halls of the museum, in spite of that strong repugnance which many of these paintings inspired in me, I was obliged to look at them and could not withdraw my eyes, so great is the attractive force of truth, even if it be despicable. And how true are the paintings of Ribera! I recognized those faces: I had seen them in the hospitals, in the morgues, behind the doors of churches—the faces of beggars, of the dying, of those condemned to death, which haunt me at night even now when I hurry along a deserted street, pass by a graveyard, or climb a mysterious staircase. There are some of them which I could not look at—a naked hermit, stretched on the ground, who seemed like a skeleton covered with skin; an old saint whose shrunken skin gave the appearance of a flayed body; the Prometheus with his entrails bursting from his breast. Ribera delighted in blood, mangled limbs, and butchery; it was his delight to represent suffering; he must have believed in an Inferno more horrible than that of Dante and in a God more terrible than that of Philip II. In the museum of Madrid he represents religious dread, old age, torture, and death.