By James Brewer
A dazzling chronicle sweeping through millennia of Spanish culture, from the Iberian Peninsula to colonised Latin America, has transformed the main galleries at the Royal Academy in London. The exhibition consists of loans from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, one of the oldest museums in New York and the US at large, but the impact is anything but museum-y.
Navigators who braved the vast and turbulent Atlantic Ocean flung open the curtains to what for Europeans was a new source of untold wealth, and for them a priority was the drawing of charts for the subsequent armadas of conquistadors. Thus, a centrepiece of the collection (on display until April 10, 2023) which spans antiquity to the early 20th century is the dramatically illustrated, unfurled World Map from 1526 put together by Giovanni Vespucci (who lived from 1486 until after 1527). It is one of the most impressive nautical achievements to emerge from the Age of Exploration.
Presented chronologically in seductive spotlight in darkened galleries, the academy celebrates Spain and the Hispanic World with a selection of more than 150 works from the unrivalled Hispanic Society collection of that sparkles with fine painting, sculpture, silk textiles, ceramics, lustreware (ceramics with iridescent metallic glaze), silverwork, precious jewellery, maps, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. In all, brilliantly put together by academy curators Per Rumberg and Adrian Locke, and Guillaume Kientz, director of the New York society, the show is a rainbow of humankind’s talents. Significantly it includes a reminder that the Americas’ indigenous artists – those who survived European-borne diseases and massacres – were quick to produce work which was the equal in artistry to that coming from the studios of their European masters.
Founded in New York in 1908 by Archer M Huntington (1870-1955), the Hispanic Society Museum & Library has what is said to be the most extensive collection outside Spain of Spanish and Hispanic art. Its development is a tribute to the passion and dedication of its founder, as Axel Rüger, chief executive of the Royal Academy, enthused as he introduced the exhibition of a breath-taking diversity of cultural and religious influences, from Celtic, Islamic (it is sometimes overlooked that the Iberian Peninsula was largely under Arab and Moorish rule for nearly eight centuries), Christian and Jewish to American, African and Asian, that have shaped and enriched Spanish culture throughout four millennia.
The museum is essentially the fruit of 19th century American industrial might in rail transport, agricultural landholding, and shipbuilding. Archer Huntington’s father, Collis Potter Huntington, made a fortune by lobbying successfully for the extension of the Central Pacific Railroad to link up the US transcontinental rail system in 1869. The magnate also founded in 1886 Virginia’s renowned Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, which boasted of its commitment to building “always good ships” – the best in the world – on the banks of the James River.
Archer’s mother Anabella must take some of the credit for her son’s foray into the arts: she inspired her family to tour Europe during which the 12-year-old Archer bought a book in Liverpool about Spanish gypsies. Seeing the great galleries of London and Paris spurred his vision to create in his home city a museum of Spanish and Latin American art. As an adult he made three trips to Spain, leading him to buy paintings, maps, and other artefacts, although he said that his purchases were all made outside that country. His approach to building his collection reflected his admiration for the British Museum template of setting exhibits in their context of the customs and daily life of their time. Grasping the importance of the Arabic contribution to Spanish heritage, he learned the language and acquired Islamic art, which was then a minority European interest.
While it has been refurbishing its north Manhattan property, the Hispanic Society has loaned part of its collection to other institutions including Madrid’s Prado. It plans to re-open fully in late March 2023, with an exhibition featuring Goya.
One reason that the skills of Renaissance cartographers were in demand as the Spanish court backed expeditions to faraway lands was that the Bible makes no reference to the Americas, meaning that earlier “world” maps had to be considerably revised to feature what was now referred to as the New or Fourth World, alongside the three ‘known’ worlds of Europe, Africa, and Asia.
This exhibition devotes a whole wall to an ornate copy of the Padrón Real, the master planisphere (i.e., projected on a plane) map and nautical chart of 1526 drafted by Giovanni {or Juan] Vespucci, nephew of Amerigo Vespucci whose name was appropriated for the continental term the Americas. It is a portolan chart – that is, marking navigational directions – with compass roses and rhumb lines across the surface. To advanced knowledge of Africa, southern Europe, and Asia Minor, are added the coasts of Florida, Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. Western parts of the continental mass remained uncharted for lack of information. Giovanni was appointed chief pilot for the government of Spain to succeed his uncle Amerigo who died in 1519. His many voyages to the Spanish possessions in the Americas lent hands-on experience.
In his manuscript on four sheets of vellum, Vespucci pops in many details: eight galleons sailing the ocean, the Red Sea coloured red, the Tower of Babel collapsing, elephants and camels in Africa, indigenous people of South America and the churches of the Holy Land. This is one of the earliest surviving maps to mark the newly ‘discovered’ Strait of Magellan. It was right up to date: the mapmaker incorporated other references to new Spanish exploration and conquest: Mexico City, and the new land of Ayllón, or Carolina.
Copies like this were distributed to navigators by the Casa de Contratacion (House of Trade) in Seville, which oversaw all exploration, colonisation and commerce between Spain and its empire in the Americas. Pilots returning home would enter corrections and information about discoveries. The Hispanic Society says that the copy on show was probably intended as a gift for Charles V on his marriage of Isabella of Portugal.
Other nautical charts and atlases in the exhibition highlight the Mediterranean-centric view of many cartographers, as in the Atlas of the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic of 1582 of Juan Martines (active 1556-1591), with compass roses and rhumb lines crossing the meridians. This atlas comprises five charts from Iceland to the Cape of Good Hope; nearby exhibits include Manual of Nautical and Astronomical Instructions c 1585 by an unknown hand; and a portolan chart of the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Atlantic, 1552, by Bartolomeo Olives of Mallorca, who was active from 1538 to 1585.
A gilded chapter of globalisation was taking off with huge European demand for so-called exotic goods. A Pacific trade route linked Acapulco in Mexico to Manila in the Philippines, which was also part of the Spanish empire. The Manila galleons brought goods from China and Japan to Mexico, returning with silver coins. Many cargoes of ceramics, ivories and Chinese silk intended for Spain remained in the Americas, where indigenous artists responded skilfully to these new models.
Maps were produced not just for international trade and diplomacy but to gather information on the lands and the people who inhabited them and gauge the scope for taxation. Surveys like the Relaciones Geograficas that took place in Mexico in the 1580s recorded history, genealogy, and ownership. The Map of Tequaltiche of 1584, made on the order of Philip II is a fine example of a localised response, coming from the village of Teocaltiche, in the present-day state of Jalisco. Don Hernando Gallegos, deputy mayor of Teocaltiche, had the inhabitants draw the map and they reported that the settlement was founded by the Cazcanes (the last indigenous people of Mexico to be conquered by the Spaniards).
The strong link between Mexico and the Philippines is demonstrated in one of the most comprehensive records of 18th century Mexico, a two-volume manuscript from 1763 entitled Origen, costumbres y estado presente de mexicanos y filipinos, with 106 accomplished watercolours. One of the pictures, by Joaquín Antonio de Basarás y Garaygorta, is of a lively Indian Wedding fiesta.
After feasting the eyes on early colonial representations, one jumps to exceptional oil paintings starting with Francisco de Goya’s majestic, life-size The Duchess of Alba, from 1797. Goya was close to the proud 13th Duchess of Alba, Maria Cayetana de Silva, who is said to have modelled for some of his most famous works. She was 35 years old and newly widowed when he painted this portrait of her dressed mainly in black in the style of a maja, a Madrileña of the so-called lower class. She is seen standing in a landscape presumably representing her estate. Written in the sand are the words Solo Goya (only Goya) and her rings are inscribed Alba and Goya. That she meant a lot to the artist is underlined by him keeping this painting in his studio long after her death.
Goya (1746-1828) was not all seriousness and satire. The exhibition hints at his humorous side in a charming sketch in brush and wash on paper, Ay Pulgas (Are there any fleas?), from 1796-7, empathising with a woman anxiously searching for parasites.
Close by are paintings by Luis de Morales (1510/11-1586), El Greco (1541-1614), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598- 1664); with two by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660): Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, c 1625-26 and Portrait of a Girl, c 1638-42, the child aware that she is ready to enter the world of adults.
No-one was to create as much of a sensation at the Hispanic Society Museum as Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), of whom Archer Huntington was a great fan. A Sorolla show staged by Huntington in 1909 attracted 160,00 visitors in a month. Sorolla’s striking use of colour, and his sometimes almost risqué scenes, were irresistible. Huntington acquired several works direct from this artist for his museum.
Sorolla’s dramatic skill is plain to see in his canvas After the Bath from 1908 in which a young woman returns from a dip, the luminous folds of her bathing cloth clinging to her body. She is greeted by a straw-hatted fisherman proffering a towel. The Hispanic Society’s description says: “Although Joaquín Sorolla’s beach scenes generally exhibit an astonishing visual variety and thematic interest, few examples in his entire oeuvre present the complex mix of narrative, artistic references, scintillating brushwork, and stunning illusion of the play of light as After the Bath.” Visitors often commented, notes this description, “that while he is the fisherman, she has her hook in him.” The curators say that the composition seems to pay homage to Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, in which the goddess is born out of the waves, and to the Roman statue (of which Sorolla owned a cast) based on an early Greek depiction of Venus Genetrix, Venus as goddess of motherhood and domesticity.
Just as popular from Sorolla was his Sea Idyll from the same year, in which a boy and girl lounging in the shallows on a summer beach catch the golden glow of the sun on their skin.
On a visit to the Paris studio of Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa in 1912, Huntington bought Girls of Burriana (Falleras), painted in oil a year earlier as part of a series on Valencian themes. Three women from the orange-growing district of Burriana are resplendent in the traditional costume for the Fallas festival – wide embroidered skirt, silk lace shawl with gold embroidery, combs, hanging earrings and other jewels. Their attire is enhanced by their complementarily caparisoned horse. Some see in this composition the stylistically ornamental influence of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918).
Visitors leave the exhibition marvelling at preparatory sketches for an 8-metres long, panoramic gouache for the Vision of Spain, a monumental mural commissioned from Sorolla by the Hispanic Society between 1912 and 1919. The series of canvases was planned to depict 15 scenes, but Sorolla ran out of wall space; he did make sketches of varying completeness for panels of the Cantabrian coast, Asturias, León and Castile.
Although works from the last five centuries might be the stars of the show, much earlier items should not be overlooked. A vast range of ancient peoples were attracted to Iberia for its mineral deposits and its access to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Earthenware bowls are the earliest works on display, made about 2400-1900 BC by a society now known as the Bell Beaker People because of their bell-shaped ceramics. By the third century BC, migrating Celts added to the mix – Celtiberian culture is represented with jewellery from what is known as the Palencia Hoard, unearthed in 1911 during construction of a railway cutting.
Enter the Romans from the third century BC, going on to control almost all the Iberian Peninsula for 600 years from 19BC. In the show is a marble torso of Diana the Huntress from between AD 138 and 50 which seems to be a copy of a Greek model from the second or third century BC. It was found near Seville, and judging by many statues of the goddess, her cult was widely followed. A mosaic of the head of Medusa, the snake-haired Gorgon, is in fine condition despite dating from AD 175-225; it was found at Carmona.
To be admired are Hispano-Islamic textiles including the gorgeous Alhambra Silk from around 1400, perhaps a tribute to architectural designs of the Alhambra palace in Granada; and glorious examples of lustreware from the 14th to 16th centuries. While the well-off would buy their glassware from Venice, they would go to Manises near Valencia for lustreware.
Latin America’s destiny was set when Cristoforo Colombo made landfall on Guanahani, an island in the Caribbean he named San Salvador (in modern-day The Bahamas), while searching for a maritime passage to the East Indies. Although Vikings had sailed there centuries earlier, the rediscovery of the American continent financed by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 changed the course of history.
Captions in detail:
World map, 1526. Ink and colour on four sheets of parchment. By Giovanni Vespucci (Florence 1486-after 1527).
The Duchess of Alba, 1797. Oil on canvas. By Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.
The Mediterranean as shown on world map by Giovanni Vespucci.
Galleons in the Atlantic, detail from Giovanni Vespucci’s World map.
Atlas of the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic, 1582. By Juan Martines (active 1556-1591).
Indian Wedding, in Origen, costumbres y estado presente de mexicanos y filipinos, 1763. Illustrated manuscript on paper. By Joaquín Antonio de Basarás y Garaygorta.
Map of Tequaltiche. Jalisco, Mexico, 1584. Watercolour and ink on paper..
Head of Medusa. Mosaic. (Roman, Canania, Alcolea del Rio, Carmona, Seville) (c AD 175-225).
Ay Pulgas (Are there Fleas?). 1796-7. Brush and wash on paper. By Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.
Sea Idyll, 1908. Oil on canvas. By Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.
After the Bath. Oil on canvas. By Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.
Girls of Burriana (Falleras), 1910-11. Oil on canvas. By Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa.
Cantabrian Coast, 1912-13, Sketch for The Provinces of Spain: Gouache on kraft paper. By Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida.
All works are on loan from the Hispanic Society of America, New York.
Spain and the Hispanic World. Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library is in the main galleries of the Royal Academy until April 10, 2023
