The great museums of the world suffer continuous pressures from that modern Inquisition that is political correctness. Like a hydra, political correctness has many heads, it manifests itself with all kinds of restrictions on freedom. At the Metropolitan Museum in New York, their bosses, the oil sheiks, demand that paintings of “lustful” nudes be removed. and the Museum of America Madrid is subject to an offensive for its “decolonization”, which given that it is an anthropological museum that collects objects from the former Spanish Empire, would simply mean its closure.
Within this discouraging panorama, perhaps the least lethal of the demands is that of having to highlight art made by women, whether there is any or not. Not long ago a young journalist questioned the director of the Prado in a press conference that he had nothing to do with the subject: “What feminine paintings are you going to buy with this year’s budget?”. Miguel Falomir, who is an old fox, replied: “I can’t specify, because as soon as the Prado shows signs of interest in a work, its price increases.” The same thing happens to Prado as to Real Madrid.
The richness of our national art gallery is, however, so overwhelming that the Prado Museum can satisfy the demands of gender policy without losing the level of its great works on display. The Prado has nearly half a thousand paintings or drawings made by women, among which are names of merit such as Sofonisba Anguissola and her sister Lucía, Artemisa Gentileschi, Clara Peeters, Madame Vigée-Lebrun or María Blanchard. It is a small thing compared to the total work of the best museum in the world, but it is what it is, and the truth is that the exhibitions “of female painters” have maintained the level of the Prado exhibitions.
The first women’s exhibition took place in 2016was The art of Clara Peeterspromoted and curated by Alejandro Vergara, who discovered a self-portrait hidden in a reflection in one of the still lifes of this 17th century Flemish painter. In 2019the brilliant year of its Bicentennial, among the cascade of great exhibitions that the Prado offered us, was Story of two painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontanaa powerful exhibition that displayed the work of a figure from the court of Philip II who, given her noble status as the queen’s lady-in-waiting, could not appear as a professional painter, but who left us paintings such as the most iconic portrait of Philip II.
This year the Prado Museum has found a happy formula to appease gender demands, The Prado in femininewhich is not one exhibition, but three, which will be developed throughout 2024. These are not paintings made by women, but by portraits of the Artistic promoters of the Museum’s collections, as the subtitle of the exhibition says. Taking into account that the founding nucleus and still the most substantial and wonderful part of the Prado is what was the Spanish royal collection, those Promoters…they were actually queens or princesses of the Hispanic Monarchy. Now they would be called “empowered women”, although without using complicated words we can say “women with power.” But with a lot of power.
Naturally, The Prado in feminine It begins with Isabel the Catholic, who not only stands out among the queens of our History, but among all the kings of Spain, whatever their gender. Isabel la Católica, of whom the Prado exhibits a small vera image, the work of an anonymous Dutchman, laid the foundations of national unity, completed the Reconquista and sponsored the Discovery of America… what else could a sovereign do? Well, she did it, since she was the initiator of the royal painting collection, since she was a lover of Flemish painting and gathered a large number of panels by Van de Weiden, Memling, Dieric Bouts and even the Italian Botticelli.
Mary of Hungary, the great collector
In the same line of energetic and capable ruler is the granddaughter of Isabella the Catholic, Lady Mary of Austria, called Mary of Hungary for her marriage to the Magyar king. Doña María ruled the Netherlands for 25 years on behalf of her brother, Charles V and was responsible for the royal collection taking a qualitative leap, because despite the distance from Belgium to Venice, she discovered Titian and made him her main painter. court. In her will, Doña María bequeathed her important collection to Philip II, thanks to which The Prado has the largest and best collection of Titian in the world, one of the triumphs that give him preeminence on the planet of painting. Doña María appears in this exhibition not painted, but sculpted in two works by the Leoni, favorite sculptors of Charles V and Philip II.
Another of the great ladies of the House of Austria was the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, daughter of Philip II. She had the character of her to the highest degree, the intelligence and ability to govern that his brother Philip III lacked, although the crown would be inherited by this good-natured and incapable prince. If she had reigned instead of him, perhaps the History of Spain would have had a different direction.
To take political advantage of the value of Isabel Clara Eugenia, Philip II bequeathed her the Netherlands, the first problem of the Spanish Monarchy, which had already been in internal war for thirty years when she became its sovereign, sharing the throne with her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria. She immediately achieved a truce that for twelve years brought peace and prosperity to the Netherlands. Naturally, being that nation the most cultured in Europe, the princess became a protector of the arts, having as court painters Rubens already Van Dycknothing less.
Isabel Clara Eugenia sent numerous paintings to Madrid from that capital of European art that was Flanders, many as family gifts, but also acting as “agent” of Queen Isabel de Borbón, married to her nephew Felipe IV. Isabel de Borbón was not like the previous figures mentioned, a ruler with her own power, but she represents another type of “artistic promoter”, that of the consort who treasures an art collection. Specifically, he commissioned numerous purchases of flamenco art from his aunt-in-law to decorate the Torre de la Reina of the Alcázar Real in Madrid.and thanks to her we enjoy today in the Prado the delicious peasant scenes of Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Among all these women of Spanish royalty, natives of Spain or coming to marry our kings, there is a “promoter” who does not belong to the Hispanic Monarchy, although she did maintain ties with it that represented a political earthquake for Europe: Queen Christina of Sweden. The only daughter of a warrior king like Gustavus II Adolphus, her father raised her as a man, which means that she not only rode a horse, wielded a sword and dressed like a man – and had lesbian relationships with ladies of the Swedish court – but he also received a good education like that received by male princes destined to reign.
For various reasons – among them the seduction exerted by Don Antonio Pimentel, the handsome ambassador of Spain in Stockholm – the Queen Cristina became a Hispanophile, despite the fact that Sweden and Spain were at odds in the Thirty Years’ War. She abdicated, escaped from Sweden in an operation mounted by Spanish espionage, and reappeared in the Spanish dominions, in Flanders, where, placed under the protection of Philip IV, she formally embraced Catholicism.
Queen Cristina made very notable artistic gifts to Philip IV. Thanks to her, the Prado has Dürer’s masterpiece, the pair of panels of Adam and Eve. But perhaps his most notable contribution to the Prado was the collection of Roman sculpture he assembled during his golden exile in Rome. Isabella of Farnesio, wife of Philip V, was another consort fond of buying good art, like Isabella de Borbón, and in 1724 she bought the sculpture collection of Christina of Sweden, now deceased. Initially destined for the Palacio de la Granja, a century later it was incorporated into the Prado, where it constitutes the essential part of its collection of classical sculpture.
For a long time there was a room in the Prado Museum dedicated to Christina of Sweden, which disappeared, like so many notable works, when they shoehorned in the Museum of Modern Art in the Prado. Now justice has once again been done to the Swedish sovereign, because this second delivery of The Prado in feminine culminates with the extraordinary equestrian portrait of Cristina that he sent to Philip IV, the work of Sebastien Bourdon. It is exhibited in the Hall of the Muses, where precisely the most notable part of Cristina’s collection of classical sculpture is exhibited, and it is expected that it will remain there after the exhibition of The Prado in feminine.
