During the last week in Rome I tried to travel back a few centuries ago and imagine Diego Velazquez visiting the city in 1630. Walking through the rooms of the Barberini Palace, wandering at the Vatican Museum I look intensely at those artists who fascinated him. What did Velazquez think when he came to the halls of Raphael and the Sistine Chapel, when he first faced the masterpieces of Caravaggio? It’s amazing the fascination that these works still produce today. I like to imagine when he met his Italian contemporaries. The art he was just discovering, those have had around…

Leonardo da Vinci was an inventor, scientist or draughtsman. Cesare Borgia briefly employed him as military architect and engineer between 1502 and 1503. Cesare and Leonardo became intimate friends and Cesare provided Leonardo with an unlimited pass to inspect and direct all planned and undergoing construction in his domain. Before meeting Cesare, Leonardo had worked as a painter at the Milanese court of Duke Ludovico Sforza in the late 1480s and  the 1490s, until Charles VIII of France drove the Sforza out of Italy.  While in Milano Leonardo painted the masterpiece “Lady with an Ermine”, portraying the sitter of Ludovico…

Me gusta la idea de que entremos en una exposición con una pregunta “ Que hace esto aquí?” tal vez porque lo cuadros que más me fascinan son los que más preguntas plantean, quizás por esa idea de diálogo con el artista y con su obra. Y sin duda porque en el Museo Lázaro Galdiano nos muestran  una propuesta muy original ( escasas son en nuestro país) y lo ha hecho de manera muy bella. A veces el arte moderno , cito a Katherine Kuh “nos produce una sensación desconcertante “nos enfrenta con amargura hacia la extrañeza, la  falta de…

When I visited the exhibition “Heroines” at Madrid Thyssen Museum I thought  about  the role of women in Renaissance and Baroque. The works by female artists  provided  me  insights into their career strategies and  revealed the different ways in which they managed to overcome social and professional restrictions .The exhibition  offers an overview of the moral, social, and religious models for women as they were constructed both implicitly and explicitly through visual art as a public expression

It’s Thursday and we must think about the weekend. Madrid will be bright and sunny,so take time to walk and relax on the terraces.  In the evening  go touring inside the Prado Museum, it is free, it is cultural and cool. There is a new exhibition about “The Young Ribera”, showing  some thirty works. One of its aims is to explain the evolution of the José de Ribera’s style until he became one of the most original and powerful naturalistic painters after Caravaggio. http://www.museodelprado.es/en/pradomedia/multimedia/the-young-ribera/?pm_video=on&pm_audio=on&pm_interactivo=on Another purpose of this exhibition is to show the activity of the Spanish artist during his stay in Rome and during the years following his…