Last Monday we had a mission to accomplish as last summer we had a few spare minutes before checking into ‘Rembrandt and his contemporaries’ exhibition so we spent them strolling around the museum looking for inspiration inside these magnificent walls.
But of course, about Rembrandt, I’ll talk in another post!
So yes, another Monday, we were eager to learn, investigate and understand art for free thanks to Mastercard which grants free access to the Permanent Collection on Mondays from 12.00 to 16.00. There are usually less people at this time of the day and the ones who are there are really into learning about art history through colourful canvases painted by people we will never get to know.
This collection is quite large. It starts with paintings dating from the thirteenth century, all of them based on religious themes as we would expect from an age where sacred or Christian iconography was the only moral standard admissible. Renaissance art, portraits such as The Young Knight in a Landscape painted by Vittore Carpaccio, some of the best Baroque art courtesy of Goya, and several Impressionists like Manet, Monet, or Pissarro are good examples until we reach some masterpieces by Braque, Delaunay or Picasso, which are closer to our times from a compositional or materialistic point of view.
One aspect I would like to mention is that Thyssen dedicates a couple of walls exclusively to women artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe. Although this is quite satisfying, I would like to see more examples not just in a separate wall, but naturally as part of the whole collection. I guess that is something we will have to hope for in the near future.
I could continue talking about every single artwork here, making it unexciting for you to visit but I have decided to focus on one of the masterpieces that makes the Thyssen Museum stand for what it is, one of a kind.
The painting I am going to talk about is quite unique as well, not only for the theme it conveys but for being bolder and more direct than usual.
It was painted by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, best known as Camille Corot and its title is ‘Diana bathing’ or ‘The Fountain’. It seems that Corot painted it during 1869 and 1870 with the help of his disciple, Oudinot.
Corot is popular for painting French countryside landscapes during the XIX century, so I was struck to find an example of the Goddess Diana, a completely nude painting signed by him. But if you focus on his work beyond landscapes, you will find quite a large number of portraits dedicated to women who lived in his rural surroundings, delicate women such as ‘Springtime of life’, along with some 30 other portraits inspired by Diana, and her famous bath time.
So back to the painting that caught my attention. The Goddess Diana really blew my mind because her pose is not what we are used to seeing when painters use this theme.
Corot shows a solitary Diana, no other nymphs are to be seen, whereas other examples of this Goddess during her bath time show her surrounded by women pampering her, holding cloths as towels, combing her hair and of course, some parts of her body would be carefully hidden, but here we can see her whole body.
In this case, her loneliness highlights her sensual figure. She appears to be shy, or perhaps she does not notice that she is being looked at, as if the painter was sneaking into this intimate and private moment. Her pose shows a coy attitude and a subtle grace.
In this case, it seems to be a preliminary study for a bigger painting, and this would be the reason why Diana appears as a sole figure, with no other garments or adornments. Technically speaking, the painting shows a smooth body, respecting the curves and volumes inherent in the feminine form, finely drawn, avoiding hard anatomical lines, a fact that makes the painting beautiful and sublime, without further complexity.
It was a pleasure for all our senses to be able to walk around and enjoy the gorgeous gem that is the Thyssen Museum.
PS: The safety measures in place allow social distancing between visitors to the Museum and given the circumstances there were few people that day.