Prado Museum visit: favorite sculptures
I visited the Prado Museum, in Madrid, for the first time a few weeks ago. These were my favorite sculptures.
The first, “Isabel II, veiled” by Camillo Torreggiani, is a marble bust but the realism of the veil over her face is truly impressive. I had seen similar pieces in Louvre, but Torreggiani’s sculpture is truly mesmerizing up close.
“The Painter Mariano Fortuny” is special to me both for being a beautiful bust, and for portraying Marià Fortuny i Marsal, one of my favorite Catalan painters. He has a huge statue in a corner near La Rambla with Carrer Pintor Fortuny, where Casa Pierra art store is located (which I am about to visit today to refill some Cretacolor pastels). Vicenzo Gemito met Fortuny in Italy and made a terracotta bust and then the final bronze sculpture.
(“Gemito” has this name as he was abandoned by his mother, and received this name in an orphanage as “Gemito” means “born” in Italian, and was commonly used for orphans, similar to how “Silva” is also used the same way in Brazilian orphanages.)
“La Tradición” was very detailed and expressive, but it also had an interesting meaning described in the sign next to the sculpture. The author, Agustín Querol y Subirats, sculpted an old woman with her two grandsons. She is telling stories from her time to her grandsons, passing down history orally, as it was tradition in the old times.
The last piece that I selected from all the impressive collection of sculptures at the Prado was “Busto masculino en una urna” by Filippo Scandellari. What impressed me the most in this bust was that Scandellari combined many different techniques, making a realistic bust that captures a human expression, and combined wax, textiles, colors, and other crafting artistic skills to create a very interesting and 3D sculpture. It was the first time I saw a bust inside an urn like this (I had seen other religious sculptures, but less interesting). There is one more sculpture by Scandellari at the Prado, so you can check that one out if you like this one, by either visiting the museum in person, or accessing their online website (photos are not allowed inside the museum, by the way).
Categories: Art