Williamstown — The great American painter Willem de Kooning claimed that oil paint was invented specifically so that artists could paint the human body better. At the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown this summer, you will see a remarkable demonstration of what he was getting at. “Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes from the Prado” is a show of 28 spectacular paintings made between the middle of the 16th century and the end of the 17th. All but four of them have never been seen in this country before; they are the work of artists of the caliber of Titian, Velasquez, Rubens, Poussin, and Zurbarán; and – as the show’s title makes obvious – their recurrent subject matter is the naked or semi-naked (and almost always female) human body.
These paintings originally belonged to and were, in many cases, commissioned by the Habsburg kings of Spain, absolute monarchs of one of the world’s greatest powers. Their empire included not only present-day Spain, but what we now call Holland and Belgium, a good part of Italy, stretches of North Africa and, of course, burgeoning territories in what they thought of as the New World. In other words, these were the paintings chosen by men who could have anything they wanted.
No wonder then that there are some gorgeous paintings here but, in truth, the more gorgeous they are, the more of a dilemma they present. A painting like Titian’s “Venus with an Organist and Cupid” was painted in about 1555 and may well have been a gift from Titian to King Philip II, but how we should understand it is far from certain. Should we celebrate it as evidence of a close and highly productive relationship between an artist and his sympathetic patron? Should we read it, as some experts do, as an appreciation of the senses of sight and hearing, the means by which we might know beauty and harmony? Or should we see it rather more straightforwardly as an image intended to arouse sexual excitement?
There is a good deal of evidence for seeing these paintings as the pornography of their time. They were collected most enthusiastically by Philip II and his grandson Philip IV, despite the fact that depictions of the nude were regarded as sinful by the Roman Catholic Church and by the Spanish Inquisition whose draconian morality these same monarchs championed. In fact, to maintain a distance between their public and private identities, the Spanish kings often kept these pictures in what they called “salas reservadas” – private rooms to which only a chosen few were admitted. In fact, subsequent monarchs regarded them as so shameful that they considered having them destroyed and, even rather later when they were acquired by the Prado, they were kept out of public view in the museum’s own sala reservada until 1838.
For some people this knowledge will make it impossible to enjoy these paintings. Others will point out that a lot of what we call the history of art is just as much the history of privilege and that it actually broadens our appreciation of great paintings to understand the all-too-human circumstances that brought them into existence. Whatever your opinion, you would be foolish not to see what is clearly one of the great exhibitions of 2016.
Because it is right here in Berkshire County, perhaps it is easy to forget what a major art museum the Clark is, and how highly it is regarded internationally. This show is not on some long international tour. The Clark is the only place in the world you can see it. If you want to see these paintings after Wednesday, October 10, you will have to follow them back to Madrid. On top of that, as the Prado’s Deputy Director Miguel Falomir happily admits, “they look better here!”
