FORTY years ago, I was elected to a fellowship at Union Theological Seminary, New York. The college campus on Broadway is some six blocks north of the main entrance to Columbia University, gates beyond which yellow Checker cabs refused to take fares.
Certainly back in 1983, the edges of Harlem were some of the most impoverished and dangerous areas of Manhattan, smelling of skunk, and the gutters all too often running with urine and blood.
Further north, on the tip of the island, is the Cloisters Museum, an adjunct of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That alone, with a combined entrance ticket, would draw some intrepid tourists, but I remember often seeing haggard and worried-looking visitors trying to rest in the calm of the recreated monastic architecture that serves to highlight medieval art before they headed back across the no man’s land to the modern city — “An awfully big adventure”.
Halfway between both, and some 30 blocks north of where I was living, is the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. which opened in January 1908 and closed its doors in 2017 for a refurbishment programme. Like so many institutions, including those local to home (as the National Portrait Gallery plans to reopen on 22 June, speculation mounts whether the public will see the 2009 Nicky Philipps portrayal of the two young officers Wills and Harry), this closure provided the opportunity to send works from the collection around the world.
Few seek it out, and, but for my enthusiastic research professor, an Episcopalian priest, Italophile, and art lover, and for a friendship with a Brazilian gynaecologist at the medical school near by, I might never have crossed its threshold, either. But for those who do, and I have been fortunate to return often, the collections of Iberian art remain unchallenged elsewhere outside Spain and Portugal.
Some 150 loan exhibits, spread across the principal galleries of Burlington House in Piccadilly, display treasures from the antique to the 20th century, and include textiles, precious metals, ecclesiastical pieces, ceramics, paintings, and sculpture. Most pieces were acquired by the museum’s founder, although the collection continues to expand.
The last gallery shows sketches for the mural cycle, The Vision of Spain, that Joaquín Sorolla painted for the museum (1911-19), after the collector and owner Archer M. Huntingdon (1870-1955) befriended him.
The Bell Beaker bowls that date to 2400-1900 BC in the first room are among the earliest known ceramics in Europe. They were found near Carmona, Seville, and the prestigious geometric patterning characterised the maritime culture that had spread along the Tagus river and as far as the shores of north Britain and Germany in the third millennium.
On loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NYMap of Tequaltiche, Teocaltiche, Jalisco, Mexico (1584), watercolour and ink on paper
The moulded figures decorating the handles of the two silver trullae (R 3035, R 3036) are spectacular examples of high-end culture in Imperial Rome. The quaich-like porringers, which measure 4½ inches in diameter and 2 9/16 inches deep, would happily have graced any imperial mansion, and date most probably from the reign of Trajan, the first Roman emperor to be born in Iberia, or that of his successor (AD 117) and second cousin Hadrian, who was born in Hispania Baetica.
Much later metalwork from the 16th century includes a finely wrought lock and hasp made to resemble leather, as well as eight door knockers, where the hammers take the form of animals and birds. On the wall notices, there is no mention of the eighth, which has the head of an African (R110), making me worry that the curators are shy of speaking to the objects in their charge; at least the collection’s website is less reticent.
The ceramics show the lasting influence of the Muslim incursions of Al-Andalus, and bring a rich palette of colours to the next two rooms. Among the tin-glazed earthenware vessels of deep bowls and pitchers, a recent acquisition (2015) caught my eye. A cobalt and lustre basin, dating from c.1425-50, frames a winged sea-dragon with a coiled tail, which is about to prey on a lone oarsman, who desperately tries to escape the inevitable danger of being caught in its maw. The curators (and the museum) wrongly suggest that this depicts Jonah and the whale, although there is nothing in the image (LE 2407) to recall Jonah 1.
Alongside, on another domestic piece, a naked boy rides carefree a hobby horse, and waves a rattle.
In the museum, the main court is dominated, on the ground level below the balconies, by a St Sebastian by Alonso Vázquez (LA 2406). Sadly, that has not been loaned to London, but we are not short-changed for masterpieces of painting. On one long wall in the third room is the full-length portrait of Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares (1625-26) which Velázquez painted to celebrate the favourite’s rise to power under King Philip IV.
By his stance and imperious gaze, he dominates the two figures each side of him; Alonso Cano’s beguiling portrait (A3504) of a canon, whose right hand rests warily on an hourglass on a red-covered table in front of a crucifix, was painted at much the same time. Antonis Mor’s earlier depiction of the 3rd Duke of Alva, the High Steward of the Royal Household, dates to 1549. The three summarise relations between Church and State in early modern Iberia.
The opposite wall has two of the undoubted works by El Greco (the Society has seven and has loaned three), the Pietà of 1574/6 (26 x 18 7/8 inches) and a later Penitent St Jerome of 1600.
In the scene of lament, St John and the Magdalen enfold the naked Christ between them, the dead man’s arms embracing them and unifying the composition. Behind them, the Virgin Mary looks forlornly heavenwards while John stretches out his compassionate hand gently touching her on the shoulder. A tempestuous sky behind attests to the bleak world view of an empty landscape broken only by the three sentinel-like crosses on the horizon.
On loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NYAttributed to Manuel Chili, called Caspicara, The Four Fates of Man: Death, Soul in Hell, Soul in Purgatory, Soul in Heaven, Ecuador (c.1775), polychromed wood, glass and metal
The third of his works is a miniature portrait head, painted on card. El Greco (1541-1614) rarely painted on a diminutive scale. There are two in a collection that I remember in Philadelphia. Although this measures just 3 1/8 x 2¼ inches, there is still the distinctly powerful face of many of his life-size works.
Three rooms offer an insight into the colonial development of New Spain, as it was called. The map that spans the Atlantic from the coastline of the New World across the Mediterranean was painted by Giovanni Vespucci (1486-1527), the nephew of the explorer Amerigo, who gave his name to the northern continent, probably as a royal gift for Charles V in 1525. In stark contrast, the lively figures of the Caxcan peoples who cavort across the map of Tequaltiche (1584), undertaken as part of a survey ordered by King Philip II, put me in mind of Grayson Perry’s world-view.
It seems fitting that the central octagonal hall should be centred on Goya, pairing his full-length portraits of the recently widowed 35-year-old Duchess of Alba (1797), whose ring has her family name and that of Goya, and from two years later, that of Don Manuel Lapeña (A99), a young nobleman who became Marquis of Bondad Real, standing confidently on a parade ground.
In her maja dress, which suggests widow’s weeds, the duchess is a sober figure, wearing neither necklace nor bracelets, caught during an afternoon walk by the riverbank. In a way that Americans never quite understand, it is a very “homely” picture of one of the wealthiest women of her day.
Until Easter, visitors to the exhibition at the Royal Academy can see why I was so exhilarated forty years ago, and why the collections should command such attention.
“Spain and the Hispanic World” is at the Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1, until 10 April. Phone 020 7300 8090. www.royalacademy.org.uk
