99 meninas

 through the miracle of blogging, I've met such talents! collectors of couture and lucky clovers, photographers- the museum worthy & amateur, writers-published authors and weavers of a child's bedtime story-aesthetes all-----sharing their talents with the world and with their loved ones and supporting my efforts on this page-for that I am forever grateful. 

The lovely photographer Lily Lewin in Savannah travels to Spain & to the Prado.
 Luckily we get to tag along.

Lily's photography pops up on her blog ojobox quite often here.

As fascinated with Velázquez, as I am, I asked Lily to lend her artist's eye to Las Meninas.

The Prado is now open on Mondays.  It's been less than a year since the doors have swung wide on the morning after domingo and few people besides scattered groups of  weary school children have caught on to the schedule change.  And so it was at the end of May my husband and I wandered the almost deserted corridors through this gallery of ghosts translated into symbols of history and dreams to Room XII.   

There on the far wall hangs Las Meninas by Velázquez (1656), a revelation of the last days of the Habsburgs and the Golden Age of Spain.  Circling the young Infanta Margarita Teresa is a display of courtiers and royal references and the painter himself in a brilliantly staged tableau of both technical and historical perspective. The latter half of the 17th century saw the beginning of the decline of the Great Spanish Empire as it slipped from the peak of its power taking the Hapsburg dynasty with it.  The title refers to the ladies in waiting who attend to the Princess at center stage wearing a stiff skirt and a bemused expression while the quotidian bustle ensues.

This young girl would one day become the Holy Roman Empress at age 15 and then die at age 21.  But to me it is such a familiar Spanish scene with its hovering cast of characters and implied intrigue and whispered gossip and dozing dog.  My husband is from Spain and when we return on twice yearly pilgrimages to his family home in Madrid  where his formidably elegant 90 year old mother holds court with attendant daughters and an entourage of maids and friends and doctors and priests and Condes and Condesas and a pack of dogs underfoot, I am struck by the similarity.  The Spanish households  I have known from the humble to the decadent are great matriarchies that thrive on a sort of domestic chaos (just watch any Almadovar movie and you'll see what I mean).  In the middle of any tormenta is a woman in charge.  ¡Viva la reina!

Meninas after Velasquez,  Melvin Sokolsky, 1960.

There is a notable list of 20th century Spanish painters, among them Picasso and Dali, who have inherited the familiar icon of the Infanta and her ladies in waiting and then retold the story in a modern language with lashings of color and  halos of paint.  The Spanish palette of spilled blood and conquered lands and stolen crowns is perhaps more muted these days but equally intense and in the works of the contemporary  painter 
Alfonso Alzamora the tradition of the enigmatic figure continues through his decades long exploration of Las Meninas. 

 Picasso and Dali interpret Las Meninas, & below, an Alfonso Alzamora's Menina

The fierce and elegant geometry of the farthingaled menina silhouette has been Alzamora's muse for some time. Painting from his studio in a small village in the Alt Empordà in Girona where the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean sea, Alzamora (the great grandson of the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz) is also a sculptor and a writer. He also happens to be an old friend of my husband.  We are lucky enough to have a few of his works, including a small Menina and one of my favorites, a cut out figure of the seated dog in the foreground of the painting.  A few years ago we visited his home which he shares with his artist wife ( who looks remarkably like Virginia Woolf) and children.  

 These photographs of Alfonso Alzamora's studio and of his Meninas are from Aficionarte, (linked below).

Large canvases in progress were strewn about the converted stone barn and the squeezed guts of paint tubes bled onto the top of a desk where he mixed his colors- vibrant reds and blues and blacks and yellows.  He is an artist of astonishing energy whose works are in many public and private collections across Europe and North America and his latest exhibition entitled 99 Meninas is a virtual one-here.

The many Meninas painted by Alzamora can be seen on his website and more at Aficionarte-& seeing them en masse, makes a memorable impression. I am drawn to the monumental nature of many of his Meninas. Whether the smallest menina or the giantess-both make an impact on the beholder-perpetuating the allure & the beauty of Velázquez's original. 
 

 Notes:
 Lily's Menina first image.
 detail of Las Meninas

 Links: 
99 Meninas
Alfonso Alzamora
Aficionarte
 ojobox


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