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Dali and the Spanish Baroque Exhibition Guide

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Dali and the Spanish Baroque Exhibition Guide This document is posted publicly for non-profit educational uses, excluding printed publication. To cite include the following: The Dali Museum. Collection of The Dali Museum Library and Archives. '9ynasy3i3d is • lAirasnw nva yoavAivs AN311V9 C*-_!T. USTUBefI - ^Jc OUI, —I—iI ~.J^> DALI AND THE SPANISH BAROQUE: INTRODUCTION rom his earliest paintings to the towering religious images in his most well known pieces, and even in his appearance (inspired by the portraits of Velazquez), Salvador Dali was deeply influenced by F the artwork that came from Spain during the seventeenth-century. This period is known as the Baroque, and is considered the Golden Age of Spanish painting. Dali's interest in Baroque art began as a student in Madrid, when he frequently visited the Spanish old master paintings in the Museo Nacional del Prado, and continued with Surrealism, which viewed the Baroque as timeless and recurring rather than as an historical period. In his middle and late years, Dali' painted in the dramatic manner of Spain's Baroque masters, chosing as subject matter traditional religious figures and secular still-life paintings- Through his references to the Baroque, Dali cast himself as a master equal to the greatest Spanish painters in history. Dali and the Spanish Baroque pairs Dali's Baroque-inspired artwork from the Museum's collection alongside works by Spanish masters El Greco, Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Zurbaran, Alonso Cano, Jusepe de Ribera, Bartolome Murillo, Juan Sanchez Cotan, Luis Egidio Melendez, Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo and Bias de Ledesma, on loan from renowned museums and collections from the U.S. and Spain. GALLERY] Seventeenth-century Spanish still-life painters adopted an austere pictorial language, as can be seen in Bias de Ledesma's Still Life with Cherries, Lupin, and Iris. It is this tradition that Dali's early still-life paintings evoke. In Basket of Bread, the simple composition with the basket, several slices of bread, and a white cloth shining forth from mysterious darkness lends the painting an almost sacramental feeling. The bread symbol- izes the body of Christ and the white cloth the ephemeral nature of worldly existence. The soft watch in The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory by Dali is a memento mori [reminder of death]. Nature "C? The Bosfcei of Bread (detail), 1926, Salvador Dal-', Morte Vivante (Still Life Fast Moving) Oil on panel, Salvador Dali Museum. St Petersburg, Florida MUSEUM ENTRANCE inverts the element of stasis (death) and BOTTOM: Stilt Life with Cherries. Lupin, and iris. infuses the still life with literal movement a. 1650. Bias de Ledesrr.3, Spanish, late 16tti early 17th C. by representing the objects as flying in a Oil on canvas. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia Purchase with Great Painting Fund ii h-oncr of Reginald Poland. 57.11 spiraling pattern. Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (detail). I952-S4 Salvador Dali' Oil on carwas, Salvador Dali Museum. St. Petersburg, Florida GALLERY 2 GALLERY 3 Dalf's development throughout the Dali admired Spanish Surrealist years (1929-1939) was Baroque treatments of the informed by the ran/fas dimension Crucifixion, in which the of still-life painting, as represented figures witnessing the by the recurring symbols of the passion are removed, leaving watch and skull, reminders of an a new austere treatment of ever present human mortality. The Christ, with the viewer in word vanitas (vanity) derives from direct relation to the imme- Ecclesiastes 1:2 "Vanity of vanities, diacy of Christ's death. The all is vanity." naturalism of the baroque The Madrid School Von/fas Crucifixion, according to represents the high point of this Daii, leads to Catholicism genre with a book, Spanish harp, and faith. elegant textiles and numerous Dali sought this effect decorative objects set alongside a in his drawing, Christ in skull that looks outwards at the Perspective. Velazquez's spectator. The painting tells us influence in particular lay in that all of man's achievements are his earliest memories of a illusory in the face of death. reproduction of his Crucifixion In Dalf's Fantasies Diurnes, a that Dalf's parents kept in distended skull is depicted in their bedroom. anamorphosis, a baroque pictorial El Greco's Christ Carrying device consisting of optical the Cross emphasizes the distortion, so made that when movement of the Christ viewed from a particular point it walking toward the moment appears normal. Dalfs use of of death and the passion of anamorphosis, in distorting a skull, his suffering as symbolized in suggests the impossibility of repre- the crown of thorns. senting our own death. He created a series of paintings featuring skulls Dali was especially fascinated by Saint Sebastian, in which mortality is linked to self- patron saint of Cadaques. Dalf and his poet-friend portraiture, as in Myself at the Age Federico Garci'a Lorca identified themselves with of Ten When I was the Grasshopper Saint Sebastian - the Roman soldier who secretly Child, where the young Dalf's head helped Christians and whose punishment was to be is transformed into a skull. tied to a tree and have arrows shot into his body. It In one version of Saint Onophrius is this moment in the story that was most popular by Ribera, the emaciated hermit TOP: Christ in Perspective. 1950. Salvador Dali with baroque artists, as the subject provided a TOP. Vanitas, ca. 1650. Madrid School contemplates the cross that he Sanguine on paper. Salvador Dali Museum, pretext to paint a male nude. Oil on Canvas Private Collection St. Petersburg. Florida holds in one hand. He holds an iron Sanchez Cotan's treatment of Saint Sebastian BOTTOM: Christ Carrying the Cross ca B90-'555 :i BOTTOM: Myself at the Age of Ten When I Was nail, symbol of Christ's suffering, in focuses on his humanity and restrained expression Greco, Spanish (born Greece), '541-1614, Oil on canvas. the Grasshopper Child. 1933, Salvador Dali, Oil on panel, the other hand, while in the fore- of pain. The School of Zurbara'n Saint Sebastian Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami. ground a skull draped with a rosary Extended loan courtesy of The Oscar B. Cintas Foundation. (.cover image) sets the body at a greater distance and performs the role of memento mori. L1988.06 emphasizes the serpentine composition of the body which is dramatically bathed in shadow. GALLERY 4 Dali's treatments of Saint Helena (said to have discovered the true cross) and the Virgin Mary take Dali's wife Gala as their model. This practice began with works like Saint Helena of Port Lligat and Tfie Ecumenical Council, where Gala appears as Saint Helena. GALLERY 5 LOWER GALLERY In The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, Gala appears as the Virgin Mary. Like a penitent saint, Dali appears in the center of the painting as a bowing monk clutching a crucifix. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was among the most pop- ular subjects of the seventeenth-century. Murillo's many treatments of the subject, as in the version displayed here, provide an artistic precedent for Dali's composition. TOP RIGHT: Saint Helena of Port Lligat (detail), Salvador Dali. Oil on canvas 1956, Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida ABOVE. Virgin of The Immaculate Conception, ca '670s, Bartolorn£ Murillo. Spanish, 1618-1682. Oil on canvas, The Cleveland Museum of Art RIGHT; The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, Salvador Dalf Oil or canvas 1958-59. Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg. Florida GALLERY 5 LOWER GALLERY GALLERY 5 Velazquez's Philip IV Wearing LOWER Armor, with a Lion at his Feet provided Dalf with an artistic GALLERY model. In the 1950s, Dali self-consciously cultivated Velazquez was the court the style of mustache painter of Philip IV, where he represented in Velazquez's lived from the time of his numerous portraits of appointment in 1623 until his Philip IV. death in 1660. Velazquez's The Ecumenical Council subjects were the royal family includes a self-portrait of and members of the court, Dalf with a Velazquez- including its buffoons and inspired mustache, holding dwarfs, as in the superb a palette and brush before a The Jester Calabazas. While blank canvas on an easel. these characters were part The canvas announces Dalf of the normal trappings of as the author of the painting, European court life. just as Velazquez depicts Velazquez made a large himself with palette and number of these works sug- brush in hand in Las Meninas gesting a sympathy for them. (Prado, Madrid, projected onto the wall in gallery 4). Dali's self-portrait in The Ecumenical Council, similarly, seeks recognition from us and stakes the artist's claim to be of the timeless stature of Velazquez. GALLERY 6 Velazquez's famous court portrait Las Meninas, and his portrait of The Infanta Margarita - here represented by Velazquez's son-in-law Juan Bautista Martinez del Mazo's Portrait of Dona Mariana of Austria, Queen of Spain as a Young Women - provided Dalf with a model type of ABOVE; Philip IV Wearing Armor, with a Lion at his Feet, ca. 1652-1654, formal court painting, which he reworked in his Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez and homage. Velazquez Painting the Infanta Margarita Workshop, OS 0*1 canvas. Museo National TGS RIGH* Velazquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory. del Prado, Madrid with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory, !958, Salvador Dah' Oil on canvas, Salvador Dalf Museum, St Petersburg, Dali represents Velazquez as a shadowy RIGHT. The Ecumenical Council (detail,- Florida figure, located at the center of the painting, I960, Salvador Dali, Oil on canvas, Salvador Dali Museum, St.
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