Digital illustration by Hana Alcharani
1st year Fine Arts

“The life of Rubens is the biography of a success”  

“The life of Rubens is the biography of a success”. This phrase with which Jaime García-Máiquez concluded his conference, synthesizes to perfection the existence and work of Rubens. An excellent artist, whose plastic art bequeathed us oil paintings that seem more like reality than painting. His hands at the service of privileged eyes and head have not been imitated by anyone in the history of art. 

Born in Germany in 1577, his 62 years of life are, as Alejandro Vergara stated, the image of a flawless painter. A tireless worker, the prolific Flemish painter left at his death a very extensive rangenof art; thanks in large part to the perfect functioning of his workshop. His professional and social success made him an figure to be imitated, not only by artists contemporary to him, but by every humanist, philosopher and theoretician. Rubens was, in short, a man on whom others longed to build their own image.  

His relationship with the artists who preceded him is key to understanding his life and work. His relationship with his contemporaries (Carracci, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Caravaggio) is only comparable to his relationship with the work of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto. 

Rubens, painter, scholar and philosopher, built his art on the foundation of classical antiquity. Studying the human figure, Rubens memorized every part of the human body, both from life and statuary. The judicious use of his knowledge, trying to avoid the effect of marble, what he called “smelling of stone”. The anti-conventionalism of the classic in his work is such that he used to give life even to sculpture. 

Beyond the impeccable knowledge of the human figure, in her conference Natalia Muñoz Rojas explored Rubens the landscape artist. Natalia’s lecture, undoubtedly the one I enjoyed the most, revealed a facet of the painter that often goes unnoticed. The fact that half of the landscapes he painted were in his collection shows how personal they were to him. In the three stages of his landscape painting we see a very clear evolution, from his propensity for the Flemish, to a learned artist who moved seamlessly through the European courts; and finally to an artist free from the demands of patrons who creates from his home in Hedstein. 

The buoyant socioeconomic situation of the painter was due to the large number of patrons who commissioned Rubens to create works, both religious and pagan; with Elizabeth Clara Eugenia and the Catholic Church stading out. 

It was the figure of Peter Paul Rubens, a genius who gave his hands and his life to contribute to the enhancement of what is, for me, the most beautiful and exalted of the artistic disciplines. A kind of artist who wrote with his brush a page in the greatness that is the history of art. 

Álvaro Rodríguez-Peral Vázquez 

Rubens and Velázquez friendship or rivalry  

The work of the Flemish painter Paul Rubens is one of the most outstanding of the European Baroque. His travels to Italy and Spain had a great influence on his work, both in technical and stylistic terms. In this article, we will analyze the importance of these trips in Rubens’ career and how they are reflected in his influence on Spanish painting.  

Rubens was born in Siegen, Germany in 1577 and moved to Antwerp in his youth, where he began his artistic training. In 1600, he traveled to Italy, where he lived and worked for eight years. During this time, he studied the great masters of the Italian Renaissance, such as Michelangelo and Raphael, and was inspired by their style and technique. He also produced numerous works for the church and the Italian nobility, which allowed him to develop his technique in painting large supports and frescoes. 

One of Rubens’ most significant works during his stay in Italy is the fresco of the Dome of the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella in Rome, which he completed in 1608. This monumental work reflects the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael on Rubens’ technique and style, and became one of the most famous works of the late Renaissance. 

After his stay in Italy, Rubens returned to Antwerp, where he became one of the city’s most important artists. In 1628, he received a commission from King Philip IV of Spain to paint a series of works for the Torre de la Parada, one of the king’s hunting residences outside Madrid. This commission led Rubens to travel to Spain for a year, where he studied the work of the great Spanish masters, such as Velázquez and Ribera. 

Rubens’ influence is reflected in Spanish artists, especially in the work of Diego de Velázquez in his use of chiaroscuro and his ability to portray figures in motion and express intense emotions in his characters. One of Velázquez’s most outstanding works expressing this friendship and influence during his stay in Spain is the painting “The Surrender of Breda”, also known as “The Spears”. This work, which depicts a battle between Spain and Holland, shows Rubens’ ability to teach and advise how to portray tension and action in a complex scene. 

In addition to his works for the Spanish king, Rubens produced numerous works for the Spanish Church and nobility during his time in the country. One such work is the altarpiece in the church of Santiago in Madrid, which shows Rubens’ ability to work on large canvases and portray religious scenes in a dramatic and emotional manner. 

In conclusion, Paul Rubens’ travels to Italy and Spain were pivotal in his career as a painter. While in Italy, Rubens studied the work of the great masters of the Renaissance and developed his technique in painting large sizes and frescoes. In Spain, Rubens was inspired by the work of the great Spanish painters and tried to transmit his knowledge to the painting of the time, as is reflected in the change that Velázquez’s painting underwent and how the Sevillian painter from that moment on asked the monarch to pay for his first trip to Italy. It is no coincidence that these two great painters improved notably, after meeting and sharing their knowledge. We do not know if it was rivalry or friendship, but what we do know is that this meeting at the court of Madrid influenced and was reflected in the work of the two great masters, giving us today a great art gallery in the Museo Nacional del Prado where their paintings are in dialogue.  

Irene Solís

Cultural Activities Technician

“RUBENS AND THE THEORY OF THE HUMAN FIGURE”, LECTURE BY JUAN BORDES.

On Tuesday, October 18, 2022, Juan Enrique Bordes gave a lecture on one of his latest areas of research: the theory of the human figure, by Pedro Pablo Rubens. Juan is a Spanish sculptor, architect, academician of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and collector born in 1948 in Gran Canaria.

Rubens was a baroque painter of the 17th century. Although his works offer a great thematic diversity, in this article we will focus on portraits, following the line of the commented conference. It is clear that the Prado Museum has the largest and one of the best collections of portraits by this artist.

The painter was inspired and influenced by the figure of Michelangelo, characterized by representing idealized bodies. When compared to Michelangelo and Rubens, people thought that Rubens’ models were bodies of laziness, idleness and little exercise, although the painter’s motto was: ” Mens sana in corpore sano ́ ́ ́.

On the other hand, Juan Bordes addressed the issue of how these bodies are drawn. Rubens was accustomed to drawing in graphite, but when he arrived in Italy he switched to drawing in charcoal, black or red chalk. He painted his sketches on rough paper, although what distinguished him from other painters was that some of these sketches he painted directly in oil.

He also used to observe his models live in order to better capture the details and essences. Of this we have a clear example in the portrait of his wife, Helena Fourmet, for which the painter gathered the 7 most beautiful women of Cretona and with the best of each one, he created her figure.

Finally, and as a curiosity, we talk about the pathology of the portrait in Rubens’ Putti. These angelic children appear in the upper part of the paintings, because their function was to help people to go up to heaven. When drawing their faces, Rubens used a set of 4 circles in order to measure the face symmetrically and add the rounded cheeks later. This is given by Hans Beham, a 16th century German printer; who, according to Ernst Gombrich, a famous art historian, claims that it was Beham who influenced Rubens’ Putti with these cheeks. In conclusion, during this wonderful lecture by Mr. Bordes, we have learned different aspects of how Rubens saw and drew the figures of the human body, as well as some curiosities that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Leyre Suarez Azcona

1st year gastronomy 

Rubens: the reflection of his life and thought in his work

In this brief excerpt I would like to show you the traits of Rubens’ thought, as well as their reflection in his pictorial works. Alejandro Vergara gave a session of the Cycle of Conferences on Rubens of the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation in which he highlighted several vital features of the artist that would shape his paintings, both in their formal characteristics and their themes.

Rubens had a difficult childhood: his father had been imprisoned for years for committing adultery with Anne of Saxony, second wife of William of Orange. In addition, he grew up without his mother, who died when the artist was ten years old.

These dramatic circumstances could be the origin of the themes that the painter would later reflect in his paintings. The exaltation of the figures, the constant movements and certain religious themes, would be nothing more than a spectacle that enclosed a deep feeling of vital suffering, disenchantment for some earthly realities and the search for the pleasant, good and beautiful.

Another characteristic feature of Rubens’ life and thought is his classical culture. This is reflected in the numerous themes on Greek mythology. As a curious fact, we know that Rubens could write long texts without using any words of his own and quoting only fragments from classical sources.

Last but not least, his religiosity. His family was of Calvinist origin, but his mother converted to Catholicism shortly before her death. It is worth noting, above all, the historical context in which he lived, deeply influenced by Christianity and art at the service of religion; specifically, the Trentist values (remember that, at the Council of Trent – 1545 -, Spain undertook to spread the reforms carried out).

A great example of all the above is The Elevation of the Cross. In this work, the movement and the exaggerated physical strength of the executioners want to speak to us of the dialectical foundation of Christianity: the death of Jesus is transformed into the great act of Redemption and elevation of the Church. Thus, the robust bodies would not only climb the cross,

but would represent the act of elevation that the Passion supposes: the creation and elevation of the Church for all eternity.

Luis del Rincón Molina

1st year Humanities

Universidad Francisco de Vitoria

The landscapes of Rubens, Lecture by Natalia Muñoz Rojas

Perhaps when we hear the name Rubens, his landscapes are not the first images that come to mind, since, despite the great extent of his work, it only includes thirty landscapes; fifteen of them were kept in the painter’s personal collection. Even so, this small part of his work can show us the mastery of this painter from a different perspective.

In what we could call his first landscape stage, Rubens proudly shows the landscapes of his land and pays homage to his Flemish compatriots such as Van Eyck or Brueghel the Elder; reflecting an idyllic vision of nature, also the result of his great devotion and following of the Christian faith, as well as his youth and the joviality of this. His work The Farm at Laken (1617) stands out.

Later, at the height of his diplomatic career, the artist made one of his most important works of landscape nature: The Landscape of Baucis and Philemon, painted around 1620. This painting, which began by being composed of four panels, underwent different modifications, something typical of Rubens, who always worked on the continuous improvement of previous works, both his own and those of other painters. In his first modification, the author added another four panels and a storm, and it was not until the third modification that the mythological characters from Ovid’s Metamorphosis were added. Here Rubens not only tries to convey the story of these characters, but also to recreate the idea of the perfect storm, inspired to a great extent by the observations of Seneca in his Natural Questions. In this way, the work ends up being plagued with small details and interior scenes that enrich it in a grandiose way.

Finally, in these stages it is worth mentioning the final moment in Rubens’ painting, when the author retires to paint for his own pleasure. It is here when he paints The Landscape by Moonlight, dated 1637. This work is a clear reflection of the maturity of the artist, we can observe the change in the brushstroke much more free and subtle, almost impressionistic, and the skill in the treatment of light that is not fed by any artificial source but only by the moon. In short, as Rubens goes on to paint nature, but not to imitate it, giving an almost personal character, adorning the landscape with his own vision of it.

In short, if anything can be said of Rubens’ landscape work is that, despite his evolution in the perception and execution of these scenes, he always tried to remain faithful to his own principle: “To paint nature in a poetic way”.

Aurora Malia (1st Year Degree in Law)

Religious painting as sacred conversation.

In the conference given by Paula Martínez Burgos the topic discussed was the use of religious painting by the painter Pedro Pablo Rubens as a sacred conversation. Paula Martínez Burgos is a professor at the University of Castilla la Mancha with a degree from the Faculty of Humanities of the UCM in Toledo. She began by describing Rubens’ religious production as triumphal, propagandistic and theatrical; very much in line with the postulates of the Counter-Reformation that had
been definitively installed in the Flemish territories. It is a production where word and image are combined in a perfectly balanced internal dialogue, helping to create an intimate and very persuasive atmosphere. On the other hand, referring to the smaller works, he explains that they have a more reflective and intellectual content. In them Rubens is not so much looking for visual impact as inner reflection. He is going to contribute an interpretation that makes his religious painting not only to be founded in the Counter-Reformation, but also in other philosophical currents such as hedonism, stoicism, irenism, etc.
The conception as a sacred conversation can be understood with the double meaning that this term has in the sixteenth century. The word conversazione in Italian means conversation, but the Latin word conversatio means pact. The Sacred Conversation is a particular pictorial genre of religious painting in which the characters do not really speak, it is a spiritual conversation. The theme of the sacred conversation shows little variation over time, but there is one that is a constant in the work of Rubens: the figures in the paintings form a relationship with each other, they begin to look at each other, they gesticulate, they interact. The sacred conversation also began to develop as the vertical format of the altarpiece changed and allowed the development of a more horizontal format, giving rise to triptychs. These were always found in architectural spaces, but little by little, under the influence of Venetian painting, they began to appear outdoors. The term sacred conversation was created at the end of the 18th century to avoid having to list one by one the saints who were represented. The choice of saints is arbitrary. They are not historical facts, they are people who belong to different times and different geographical areas. Sometimes they are authentic mystical subjects. In Rubens’ catalog there are several sacred conversations with a metaphorical conception, paying homage to all the years he has spent in Italy. By recovering this genre he is demonstrates that he is a great connoisseur of Italian painting and he does it with a very concrete spiritual commitment. Within the strict conception of sacred conversation we find The Defenders of the Eucharist and The Holy Family Surrounded by Saints. Rubens communes with the Christian humanism of the 16th century. In his case the two currents of European humanism converge: Italian humanism and Flemish humanism. A more metaphorical sacred conversation is Rest on the flight into Egypt with saints. In short, Rubens was a diplomat who had to solve missions alongside the greats of Europe, so it is not surprising that at the entrance of his mansion in Antwerp the two statues that welcome us are the statue of Minerva as a symbol of wisdom and Mercury as the insignia of eloquence, the same eloquence that guides his thinking when it comes to solving all these compositions.

Aitana Antón (1st year International Relations) 

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR READING ABOUT ART

If in these last few days of vacation you are thinking about what to read about art or looking for a book for a loved one who is passionate about painting we recommend these 5 books:

• – A classic: The History of Art by E.H. Gombrich.

For anyone passionate about art or who wants to make a start in this area of beauty, you can not miss this manual of art, suitable for all people of all levels. As Professor H. W. Janson described it, it is an intellectual and physical delight.

• – For the more daring: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

This book is for all those artists or beginners in the visual arts who have run out of ideas or who need a push to look at reality from a different point of view. Journalist and method teacher Julia Cameron rediscovers reality from the point of view of creativity, showing us that we are all creative and that imagination has no end. If you have reached an artistic standstill and don’t know how to move on, this book is for you.

• – El prado, la cultura y el ocio by Eugenia Afinoguénova.

For the historians, those who like to know about the beginnings of everything and how what we know today was built. Specifically, this book tells us the history of the great Prado Museum, in its pages you will find great anecdotes and events that took place within the walls of the building of Villanueva and that the guides do not usually tell.

• – El retrato español del Greco a Picasso (The Spanish portrait from El Greco to Picasso).

In this manual you will be able to enjoy these two great artists, where their work is compared through the more than four hundred years that separates them. You will observe how the artist is built by looking at and copying others, in this way the work of Pablo Picasso is created and built. If you are interested in this type of book, we also recommend you to look for the catalog of the Picasso/Lautrec exhibition at the Thyssen.

• –  Personajes del antigCharacters of the Old Testament (The Bible in the Prado Museumuo testamento. La Biblia en el Museo del Prado) by PPC publishing house.

Finally, for all those who would like to make a spiritual tour of the Prado Museum, we recommend this small manual, where with a simple description accompanied by a good image, shows you twenty-six works of the Museum from the viewpoint of the Old Testament. In this tour, we highlight what the recently deceased Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI told us: “The intimate relationship between the Testaments, recalling with St. Gregory the Great that what the Old Testament promised, the New Testament made visible; what the former announces in a hidden way, the latter openly proclaims as present. Therefore the Old Testament is a prophecy of the New Testament; and the best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament (Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 41).

Museo del Prado

This holiday season we can take a tour of the Museo Nacional del Prado looking for the great Mystery of Christmas in its works.  

We recommend a short but intense tour through the hands of four great artists, who will help us find the Beauty of these days. 

To begin this tour we will start with The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, a work restored a few years ago that generated a great stir among tourists to discover its true colors. This work with its great architecture of semicircular arches and bright colors, remind us of the simplicity of the virgin and the way of salvation through the yes of the new Eve.  

Secondly, we will see the genius and miniatures of Bosch’s paintings. Specifically we will focus on the triptych of the Adoration of the Magi. A work composed of three panels, whose play of color manages to show a great depth, going from deep blue to brown and then to green. This range of colors is always used by landscape painters to show the viewer the depth of nature.   

Furthermore, in this painting we can play a game, thanks to the different messages that Bosch leaves us through the miniatures inscribed on the objects of the Magi. In this painting we invite you to look for St. Joseph who is hidden in one of the tables.  

After playing and talking with Bosch we will go in search of one of the largest paintings in the Prado Museum, The Adoration of the Magi by Rubens. A painting created to represent Peace among European countries in the 17th century. In this canvas Rubens portrays all the people, but paying special attention to the Magi who represent the monarchs of the moment, reminding them of what is important: who is the one who truly governs the World. 

Finally, we will finish with the Adoration of the Shepherds by Murillo. This artist from Seville left us an endless number of sacred works that help us to contemplate the reality of these days. Therefore, although we advise you to go to see the shepherds, we believe that a good option is to get lost throughout the room and see how the figure of St. Joseph has changed over the centuries. In the first representations we find an older and less important man as we have seen in Bosch. However, from the 17th century onwards we see how the artists represent St. Joseph with a more paternal posture, affectionate and custodian of the baby Jesus. 

If you want to know more about each work of art, go to PDF of the explanation and enjoy the art. Merry Christmas!  

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

For this Christmas we suggest a visit to one of the great museums of Madrid, with a collection as good as unknown. The Museum of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando usually goes unnoticed by most of the public, but is testimony to the passage of countless magnificent artists through their classrooms. 

The Royal Academy was first opened in 1752, under the reign of Ferdinand VI, whose headquarters is located since 1773 in the palace of Goyeneche in Madrid. It is one of the eight Royal Academies of Spain, whose purpose is “to promote artistic creativity, as well as the study, dissemination and protection of the arts and cultural heritage, particularly painting, sculpture, architecture, music and the new image arts”. 

The Academy served as a school for generations of artists, such as Sorolla, Carlos de Haes, Eduardo Rosales, Ignacio Zuloaga and Pablo Picasso. In addition, on its walls hang works by great masters such as Luis de Morales, El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Rubens, Van Dyck and Goya. Also noteworthy is its collection of intaglio prints, which permanently exhibits Goya’s engravings along with his original plate. 

Not only that, the Academy has a casting workshop, which has important plaster casts of some of the best sculptures in the world. Laocoonte and his sons, Hercules Farnese, Apollo of the Belvedere or the Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti are some of the masterpieces that visitors can contemplate in plaster. 

The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando is a must for all art lovers. Usually unnoticed, its collection is a treasure for the artistic heritage of Spain, preserving a small sample of some of the great masters of the History of Art. 

By Álvaro Rodríguez-Peral Vázquez, 3rd year Law + IR student

“Argos had a head ringed with one hundred eyes. And so, two of each of the eyes used to grab sleep in turn, and the rest were watching over and remaining on guard. In whatever way he had stood, he was still looking at Io. Even with his back turned, he was holding Io in his sight.”

This is part of the description that Ovid makes in the first book of “The Metamorphoses” of Argos, one of the two main characters of the work. Argus, according to Ovid, was a shepherd who was entrusted by Juno to watch over the nymph Io, lover of her husband, Jupiter. Jupiter, as a way of freeing his mistress who had become a cow, sent his son Mercury with the mission of killing the shepherd and bringing the nymph back.

Velázquez was commissioned to paint this work, dated 1659, for the Hall of Mirrors of the Alcazar in Madrid. The painter arranges three figures on a clearly horizontal canvas (1.27 m high by 2.50 wide), which he is able to represent in such a way that their positions do not seem forced, but in perfect harmony with the space they occupy. The light is fundamentally between the shepherd and the deity, and during his stay in the Hall of Mirrors it would be reinforced by the light that ascended towards the canvas, since it was placed over a window.

Velázquez painted this work in his stage of absolute maturity. The meticulousness and detailed realism of his early years had been transformed into a loose and less concrete brushstroke, giving priority to color and light over the definition of forms. As he demonstrates in many of his other paintings, he had an erudite and perfect knowledge of the mythological subjects he painted. In this and other of his works, such as the Fable of Arachne (or The Spinners), the Forge of Vulcan or Mars, Velázquez presents ordinary characters, who make up a scene more like one from everyday life than mythological. His constant search for naturalism, his eagerness to represent reality as it is, leads him to show us simple characters, and not the idealized deities that we might imagine when we read Ovid.

Unlike other scenes of Mercury and Argus, such as the one by Rubens in the Prado Museum, the painter from Seville does not represent Mercury playing the flute or about to deliver the mortal blow to the shepherd’s neck, but chooses a peculiar moment in the story, with Argus already asleep and Mercury picking up the sword to complete his mission. An almost total absence of movement makes evident a restrained violence, a stillness that anticipates the chaos that will follow the moment when Mercury raises the sword.

The work was saved from the fire at the Alcazar on Christmas Eve 1734, a fate that did not befall other works such as Psyche and Cupid or Apollo and Marsias. This small miracle allows us today to contemplate and enjoy one of the most incredible works of Diego Velázquez, currently in room 009 of the Museum.

By Carmen Fernández Coveñas, 5th year Fine Arts student

Velázquez is famous worldwide. Countless books, studies and writings exist about his work. He is so famous that probably all Spaniards are able to mention at least one of his paintings. However, not so many know his origins, his motivations or the journey of successes and opportunities that led him to be who he was.

Personally, as an artist and designer, I was thoroughly familiar with his work and the more technical concepts behind it. I even thought I had a clear idea of his personality. However, the Prado lecture course caught my attention. Little did I know how many personal and contextual aspects I would discover by participating in this scholarship. Scholars from all over the world share their knowledge with us. Beyond a scholarly structure of facts, dates and names, in each lecture we are introduced to the image of the artist, to his thoughts, to the society he knew. The scope of this cycle of conferences is profound and enriching because it goes beyond the stereotype we have of the painter. We manage to humanize his figure and understand his situations and, therefore, his work.

Each lecturer is an expert in his field, which allows us to immerse ourselves in what he tells us. However, the lecture series is sufficiently well structured to start from a basic level in art history, without being boring or repetitive for those who have more knowledge of Spanish Baroque painting. In addition to exploring his lesser-known paintings, we explore Velázquez’s artistic context, learning much more than we might think at first (the workings of the Royal Court, the Spanish nobility, the painter’s true interests, the conquest of technique or his first mistakes as an artist and how he learned to be the Master of masters).

The work we see in the image is The God Mars, located in room 012 of the Prado Museum. Created in 1638, during the painter’s artistic maturity, it is one of the works that always aroused my interest. Before going through this series of conferences, I only knew the technical and conceptual aspects of the work, but my questions went beyond theoretical knowledge. Now I understand Velázquez’s concerns in developing this work, the social context and the king’s intentions with it or the symbolism and the creative process that the artist followed to develop it. However, the naturalism of the piece is what most strikes me and, after some lectures, I understand more deeply what Velázquez pursued with models as real as this one we see.

I could spend hours commenting on everything that the course has given me, but in general, I feel very grateful to enjoy the talks of great experts such as those gathered by the Museo del Prado. For the full experience, I recommend everyone to apply to enjoy these cycles, because they are a delight for any art lover.

By Julio Fernández Calderón, 3rd year IR + PPE student

The Triumph of Bacchus by Velázquez is another example of the leitmotiv of the Spanish Baroque: its chromatic sobriety and simple content contrasts with the agglomerated and colorful paintings of some of his contemporaries -Pieter Aertsen and his painting The Butcher’s Shop is an example-, more than conveying a message, they seem to be trying to demonstrate their skill and talent as painters; or at least that is what it seems to me. However, what is of special interest to me here is not to enumerate the differences present in the works of those painters and Velázquez, but to ask myself about the motivation that gave rise to the genesis of these works, that is, about the idea of latent beauty that these painters wanted to convey when they created them.

In the case of Pieter Aertsen’s works, it could be said that they contain an ideal of beauty strongly linked to the sensitive, hence their exaggerated content and their high chromatic range; it would seem that they wanted to be affirming that only in concupiscence, in the mundane, could beauty be found, -something that in a certain way is what, along general lines, photography intends, although that is another subject to be talked about in another space-. Thus, unintentionally, with his works he disintegrates in an antagonistic dualism the sensitive from what transcends it, to conclude that only in the former can beauty be found.

Contrary to what Aertsen does, Velázquez chooses to focus on the narrative underlying the work, rather than on its form, as Aertsen did: hence it can be said of his paintings that they harbor “little content but much meaning”. In them we find an invitation to reflection, hence their sobriety and simplicity. We will never find in them a clear apology to the senses; on the contrary, the storm of stimuli of Aertsen’s works is dissipated with the paladine clarity of Velázquez’s. For the Sevillian artist, beauty is unitary, it understands neither factions nor Manichaeism. Its essence resides in the world and disappears when it disintegrates. Beauty becomes the whole that is reality and the sensitive in the safe conduct through which we can reach it. This is the reason why Velázquez does not want to bombard us with an arsenal full of color and forms: he does not understand that beauty is to be found in the mundane! On the contrary, this is the veil behind which it remains latent, immutable; the lush forest that prevents us from seeing the grandeur and majesty of the towering sequoia.

It would seem simple to conclude that the beauty of Velázquez is that which lies behind the sensitive; however, in doing so we would be, once again, breaking reality into two opposites, ergo, putting an end to the beautiful. We must bear in mind that the world is not without the sensitive, but neither is it the sensitive. It is necessary, then, to restart our reflection in such a way that we manage to resolve this apparent aporia in order to agree, once and for all, on a correct explanation of the latent beauty in Velázquez’s paintings: which we will call the natural beautiful.

In this sense we will say that natural beauty is, as Byung-Chul Han would say, the “already of the not yet”. Nature in its pure state that impassively surpasses the limited capacities of human reason, tearing them apart, to rise above them in the sublime, the suprarational. Any attempt to objectify, or humanize (disintegrate), natural beauty will only exterminate its beauty, its genuineness, its negativity. Natural beauty, then, is perceived in a “blind and unconscious” way; it does not lend itself immediately to pleasure or delight, but invites reflection on the mystery it contains. Thus, natural beauty is enigmatic, which is negative, because it does not please; and even sometimes painful: because it shakes us, because it warns us of our finitude, by immersing us in its absolute, on which we are insignificant; and that makes us feel uncomfortable. For this reason, pain will be the only safe-conduct through which we humans will reach natural beauty: “Pain is the longing for what the beautiful promises”. The heartbreaking feeling experienced with pain, and before the sublime, warns us of a vehement desire, inherent to our being, to reach another state, another form of life in which pain disappears; where the self is absorbed by the beautiful, and not the other way around, as will happen with digital beauty. In short, pain is the subject’s nostalgia for natural beauty, which begs to leave its being, which asks to reach fullness: natural beauty.

Thus, natural beauty will lend itself to be portrayed by Velázquez who, using his illustrious gifts, will be able to enclose in a single image the chaotic Leviathan, which embodies nature itself under the pseudonym of beauty. However, capturing is not synonymous with taming and, thus, imprisoning the beast does not mean that it cannot escape; it will, because its control escapes man’s. In the same way, trying to define beauty will be like trying to tame the biblical monster: a daring, vertiginous task, doomed to failure. Therefore, it is a crass mistake to try to define beauty; by doing so we would only succeed in staining with our dirty maw that which is only within the reach of the gods: their definition. In other words, we would bite the forbidden apple and we would be forced to exile ourselves from Eden, or what is the same, to not be able to contemplate the beautiful.

Thus, although we cannot define what beauty is, we can talk about it, we can describe it. That is why, having said this, I will dare to speak of what beauty is for me, which is nothing more than an intuition. It is appearance, hesitation, dissimulation. It never “goes straight to the point”. Unlike pornography, which is transparent and explicit; beauty is subtle, suspicious and mysterious. That is why it is never principal, but secondary. Pornography is the main thing, because it is made for exhibition: for others. The beautiful, on the contrary, is not, nor will it try to be, customizable. It is, period. That is what makes it genuine and enigmatic: it is not made for man; it is, independently of man; man only encounters the beautiful. Metaphors are an example of the beautiful. They are the dress of the text, which turns immersion in it into an act of love. They are opposed to information, which by its very essence is invincible, it is oriented towards an ultimate truth, towards explanation: that is why it is not beautiful. What is inherent to beauty will therefore be the mystery, which is never known, but which is intuited. It is the “intuition of what in the other remains eternally secret to himself, about what I will never know about him and which, nevertheless, attracts me under the seal of secrecy.” Therefore, the beautiful is found in the inviobility of the object; in what is intuited but will never be fully discovered: it is the penultimate truth.

In short, we conclude that the ideal of beauty sought by Velázquez in his works is unitary, because it combines the sensitive and the intelligible in a whole that is reality itself. The function of art, then, will be to imitate this supreme entity that is nature (reality). Its work cannot be, on the contrary, scientific insofar as the object of interest escapes the limits of reason, ergo it cannot be objectified. Any attempt at objective art, according to Velázquez’s ideal, will cease to be art, since it can only be intuited, and not understood, by human intelligence.