Faux Diaries: Prado Prado Prado
The primary advantage of getting up very early is that J and I are in line at the Museo del Prado at 9 in the morning, well before the noonday sun begins to beat down in earnest, and certainly before the tourist queue starts to wind around the building. Tourist Madrid opens at 9. The real Madrid does not like mornings, possibly because it is suffering from a massive hangover. On another morning, we stop by a chocolate and churro shop that is supposed to cater to late night and early morning types. The sign says that they are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is a bit of problem because the staff doesn't arrive until 10. Cranky as I was, I am pleased to report that churros and drinking chocolate are a delicious combination that should embraced by all right-thinking people.
The Prado is spotless and quiet at opening time, and so vast that for the first hour or so, it feels as if J and I have the place to ourselves. We move from room to room, communing with paintings that are mostly familiar from art books. Here are halls of assorted suffering saints, with and without creepy headless cherubim. A variety of Jesus Christs are born, held in the arms of the Virgin, visited by Wise Men - they preach and wash people's feet and die and are resurrected. I begin to feel conspicuously Jewish. El Greco's Jesus is elongated and slightly hallucinatory. El Bosco's triptychs are unapologetically weird - I spend fifteen minutes squinting at some alarming flower/shell/vagina in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Goya's Maja appears, both naked and clothed, aptly demonstrating the importance of finding the perfect dress. Velasquez's Mars, draped in a sheet, looks like a naked biker with a handlebar mustache. I see dwarves and more dwarves and sad-looking noblemen with hollow cheeks.
I've almost made it through the entire museum, feet aching, when I realize that I am looking at a painting of myself. It's 1853 and I've been painted by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz and it is, for some strange reason, labeled Amalia de Llano y Dotres, the Countess of Vilches, but I have sat for no small number of portraits - I have my very own portrait painter - and I know what a portrait of myself looks like. There I am. Hanging on a wall. In this painting, the Countess of Vilches is 32 years old. She is wearing a very nice dress. I briefly consider buying a lot of blue silk taffeta and an anti-bellum ballgown pattern. I spend some time wondering what sort of shuffling of genes produces indentical 19th century Spanish Countesses and 20th century Soviet Jews. I get some vague notion of what Grace Kelly is supposed to feel like, staring at that painting of Carlotta Valdez in Vertigo, except for the flowers and Hitchcock and throwing myself into the Bay and the fake suicide. I buy a print, because I'm vain, and some Velasquez postcards to send home.
The Prado is spotless and quiet at opening time, and so vast that for the first hour or so, it feels as if J and I have the place to ourselves. We move from room to room, communing with paintings that are mostly familiar from art books. Here are halls of assorted suffering saints, with and without creepy headless cherubim. A variety of Jesus Christs are born, held in the arms of the Virgin, visited by Wise Men - they preach and wash people's feet and die and are resurrected. I begin to feel conspicuously Jewish. El Greco's Jesus is elongated and slightly hallucinatory. El Bosco's triptychs are unapologetically weird - I spend fifteen minutes squinting at some alarming flower/shell/vagina in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Goya's Maja appears, both naked and clothed, aptly demonstrating the importance of finding the perfect dress. Velasquez's Mars, draped in a sheet, looks like a naked biker with a handlebar mustache. I see dwarves and more dwarves and sad-looking noblemen with hollow cheeks.
I've almost made it through the entire museum, feet aching, when I realize that I am looking at a painting of myself. It's 1853 and I've been painted by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz and it is, for some strange reason, labeled Amalia de Llano y Dotres, the Countess of Vilches, but I have sat for no small number of portraits - I have my very own portrait painter - and I know what a portrait of myself looks like. There I am. Hanging on a wall. In this painting, the Countess of Vilches is 32 years old. She is wearing a very nice dress. I briefly consider buying a lot of blue silk taffeta and an anti-bellum ballgown pattern. I spend some time wondering what sort of shuffling of genes produces indentical 19th century Spanish Countesses and 20th century Soviet Jews. I get some vague notion of what Grace Kelly is supposed to feel like, staring at that painting of Carlotta Valdez in Vertigo, except for the flowers and Hitchcock and throwing myself into the Bay and the fake suicide. I buy a print, because I'm vain, and some Velasquez postcards to send home.