Wieneke Archive Book 4g : Art in Brisbane Presscuttings

El Greco's St Luke (Toledo Cathedral), Maino's St John the Evangelist Wrat» Caroline Tisdall reviews the latest exhibition at the Royal Academy Spanish main stream ors were at last expelled from Gran- o... and at the beginning ut the 16th itury under Charles V Spam and the y Roman Empire were united. This the Spain of Cervantes and of the sties St John of the Cross and St ..esa of Avila. 111 these threads are woven into the Of the time. The painters of Toledo, Granada and Madrid were losely dependant on the patronage of }lurch and court. Their art reflects the xtraordinary 'combination of fanatical p: rituality and hard-headed expansion - oil that made the Golden Age. As :tinting it is deeply mystical and dis- urbingly realist, and it is this appal-- ly Incompatible marriage of open- i fts that makes Spanish painting so recognised. The Golden Age begins in Toledo nth El Greco. and with him immedi- toly reaches a peak of mysticism that 5 the expression of the Counter-Refor- vdion at its most intense. Toledo was ccond only to Rome in richness then lid was only eclipsed in/the 17th cen- i:ry when Philip III moved the royal curt hack to Madrid. Such moves made or broke schools painting. Not that El Greco ever ',awned a school : his style and imag- :Litton were so directly the product of crsonal intensity that he found only one close disciple or imitator : Tristan, who the exhibition shows to have been a pale copy of the master. Yet even El Greco, surely one of the most startling ' originals ' in the history' ut art, carried with him the influence of Italy which was to linger on through- out the century. For him the important experience was Byzantine, coloured with the Venetian vision of Titian and Tintoretto. For others, like Ribera, the forming spirit was that of Carra- vaggio. The painters of Valencia had looked to Leonardo and Italian Mannerism, while the artists of Madrid had the example of Leonardos Codices, only recently rediscovered in the library to which these had passed. Later on the still life painters of Granada were to take Dutch and Flemish painting as a starting point. But the consistant fea- ture of the Spanish art of this time, whichever centre it stemmed from, was it extra Spanish ingredient a sombre intensity that is quite distinct from the Italian vision. Nowhere is this so clear as in El Greco's Annunciation. There's no calm or peace in this, no time for steady contemplation. ' The action and the mood are as dramatic and restless as the green robes of the angel, a green more strident than any seen before. El Greco, Velasquez and Murillo are more familiar names than Ribera, who spent most of creative life in the Spanish outpost of Naples. The exhibi- tion reinstates him in the heirarchy by bringing together a major.budy of his work, including the huge Calvary which has only recently been moved from obscurity in Osuna to cleaned and restored splendour in the Prado. It exemplifies the tradition of which Salvador Dali's horrific drama of the crucifiction is a latter-day continuation. Here as in portraits, still life painting and less sombre religious themes, all is dark in the background. Light strikes where the drama is most intense, a hand, a foot, an -agonised face. The artificiality of the lighting is all the more sinister because the features it throws into relief are painted with the most startling realism. A similar contrast hetween the realism of the treatment and the extra- ordinary nature of the subject adds an extra oddness to another painting by Ribera . The Bearded Woman . Here the painter displays the same kind of 16th century fascination with the abnor- mal and the strange as led Durer to undertake long journeys to see swine with five legs or unheard of monsters. This was after all the age of dis- covery, of the first taste of potato and of pineapple. Mertes bearded woman was described as " a great wonder of Nature," a woman who lived in the Abruzzi and whose beard had grown at the age of 37, though she continued to bear children as tile painter suggests and her husband's perplexed and weary brow confirms. The realism of Velasquez is of a completely different sort. Between the painter and his sitter there may have been the agreement that " portraits should not hide the sitter's blemishes." just as Cromwell wanted warts and all. But all Velasquez's sitters are clearly his creations and even Philip IV shares the typical Velasquez mouth. Realism becomes quite fearsome when applied to the figures that exemplify the fanaticism of the church, the nuns and monks and knights of the orders. It takes on an even more haunting effectiveness when applied, to the still lives that were the speciality of Gran- ada. Here the masters of strange and pessimistic vision come into their own : Zurbaran and the less -known Juan Van der Hamen y Leon. There are flowers, fruit and vegetables, the meats and fish of the well laden table but all are tainted, just like the Vanitas projections of skulls and transience. These are like presentiments. In them is the knowledge that life and beauty fade and die. So do golden ages. The years ahead were to bring disasters of all kinds for Spain : the defeat of the Armada, plagues that devastated the populations of cities that had become fat, the bankruptcy of the Royal Trea- sury. and unemployment for five -sixths of the population at a time when England and Hollan'tl had only one in a hundred out of work. So ended the Golden Age but its painting remained. The Golden Age of Spanish Ranting at the Royal Academy until March 14