I spent the last day of my Spanish holiday in Madrid. And a quick visit to Madrid MUST always include at least one trip to one of the top 3 museums: Prado, Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemizsa.
Above is an extremely bright picture of the Velazquez entrance to the Prado Museum. It was a very sunny day and someone (who will not be named) tampered with the settings on my camera. The result? EXTREMELY bright pictures which hurt to look at – this is the only one that sort of survived… ANYWAY, below is an image of the exterior of the Prado Museum bowl I recently painted.
Unfortunately I did not take photographs of the interior of the bowl finished (of which I am INCREDIBLY proud and feel equally stupid for not doing my photographic homework as this piece now lives somewhere else). The only snapshots are of the paintings in progress, as you can still see the pencil outlines that are normally removed when the piece is fired. When referring to the collection at the Prado (which originally belonged to the Spanish royal family), I had to include a Velazquez. And if one is to paint a Velazquez, one should go big: so Las Meninas it was! (Please note that I studied Art History in Spain and, therefore, in Spanish. So the names of the works will be in Spanish as that is the way I learnt them!) Another painter whose work is a must is El Greco and I chose his El Caballero de la mano en el pecho.
Below is an image of the other side of the bowl. On the left is Goya’s La Maja Desnuda and on the right El Descendimiento by Rogier van der Weyden. When I showed the finished bowl to my family and friends in Spain, they all guessed 3 out of the 4 paintings, except for van der Weyden’s piece. However, I can’t help but think which ones would be recognized by my Canadian friends. Particularly as the last time I put them to the test, all but one of them thought that the Matisse painting in my MoMA bowl was actually a Picasso… Snob? Me? No way!
Araceli Robledo 