Meta-painting. A Journey to the Idea of Art

Greco-Roman mythology and history include various episodes on the origins of the arts which were used in the early modern age to express important creative concepts by means of comparison.

The story of Narcissus, who “invented” painting when he saw his own reflection in a pool in which he subsequently drowned; Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods in order to give life to a sculpture that he had made, earning him his cruel punishment; and Daedalus, the craftsman who watched his son Icarus fall from the sky with the wings that he had made for him, all located artistic activity in an ambiguous terrain: one in which men developed their creative powers and competed with the gods but also, for the same reason, a terrain of conflict, tension and punishment. This is the sublime and dangerous alternative to the previous section. 

Among the themes running through the history of Western art is that of “illusionism” or painting’s aspiration to be confused with reality so that the “painted” should seem “real”.

This intention is to be found in numerous different periods and places and takes a wide range of forms, of which this section presents some of the most obvious: sitters or religious figures who extend beyond the limits of their frame; paintings that simulate sculptures or tapestries; trompe l’oeils that aim to deceive the eye, etc. The creators of these works explicitly play with the tension that arises between the two-dimensional nature of a painting and art’s desire to introduce the third dimension and even extend the pictorial space towards the viewer. The presence of a signature on some of these works emphasises the element of artificiality and witty playfulness involved.  

The Renaissance saw the almost complete acceptance of the concept of “artistic awareness”: the idea that painting and sculpture were not craft practices but artistic matters and as such subject to laws and precepts and capable of possessing their own history and originating a tradition.

As a painter considered both the “father of colour” and the model of the court portraitist, Titian was a key reference point for one of these traditions. He generated an important following in a Europe where artistic frontiers were still notably permeable and in which the concept of “national school” had not yet prevailed.

He is to be seen in this section, in which the outstanding work is his Self-portrait and which also includes paintings by Spanish, Italian and Flemish artists that pay explicit tribute to this great Venetian artist. 

As paintings and sculptures increasingly came to be seen as “works of art”, interest grew in the artists who created them. As a result, from the end of the 15^th century we encounter numerous self-portraits of artists and depictions of them by their peers.

These works established a history of the profession, and painters and sculptors joined the ranks of public figures. Through images of this type we not only know how these artists looked but also their situation and aspirations.

Their clothing generally indicates their financial position; their closeness to kings and nobles says much about their social status and professional success; a high forehead and intelligent gaze show them to be intellectuals; and in some cases the objects that accompany them refer to the starting points of their creative activities.

The Enlightenment and the significant development of historical research led to the emergence in Europe of the modern concept of art history, which was often articulated around the idea of “national schools”. In Spain this process culminated in 1781 when Jovellanos published his Elogio de las bellas artes, the first general, organised and comprehensive history of Spanish painting, which he associates in his text with the concepts of “truth” and “nature”. This period also saw several important initiatives intended to facilitate the study, appreciation and dissemination of the history of Spanish art, for example Goya’s prints based on paintings by Velázquez, the inclusion of various artists in the series Portraits of Illustrious Spaniards (from 1791), and a number of publications written by leading intellectuals such as Antonio Ponz and Ceán Bermúdez.

The major changes that came about in the late 18^th century with the transition from the Ancien Régime to the modern age are reflected in some artists’ attitudes to religious art.

The most eloquent case is Goya, who in his drawing What does this Spook want? and his print This is no less so adopts a remarkably independent attitude in order to question the element of superstition and fear present in the uses made of some religious images.

In Tantalus the artist returns to a traditional devotional subject, the Pietà, in order to update and reinterpret it in a secular key, while in his drawing Don’t eat, great Torrigiano he depicts the sculptor who died in prison due to the intolerance of his patron who had accused him of destroying a sculpture of the Virgin and Child.

Love, death and fame are three interrelated themes that had traditionally been present in any reflection on the arts but which became notably present from the Enlightenment onwards.

Love in all its different aspects was frequently considered a force inherent in both artistic creation and in works of art themselves, many of which stimulated that emotion.

In turn, the idea of fame became increasingly important alongside an increasing interest in the personality of the artist. As in the context of religion and sainthood, in the art world death was on occasions seen as the preliminary to fame, with the artist as hero.

In the 18^th century the “faces of art” acquired much more variety in Spain. Artists and their clients were depicted with increasing frequency but so also were their friends and relations, providing us with a much better idea of painters’ emotional environments than in previous periods.

This is evident in this section with Paret and Goya, the latter particularly fond of including the word “friend” in his portraits. Artists began to use more varied formats for depicting themselves, on occasions introducing elements that refer to their most private selves as the result of an intense exercise of self-scrutiny.

Some works of this type, in which the self invades the sphere of art, herald the arrival of a new era in the relationship between artists and their creations.  

The Museo del Prado first opened to the public at the time when Goya was creating some of the works displayed in the previous section. The year was 1819 and the Prado’s inauguration can be associated with the rise in the founding of museums following the French Revolution.

Housed in one of Madrid’s finest buildings, the Prado represented the definitive enthronement of “art” as a matter fully worthy of public appreciation and capable of arousing collective pride.

The medallions depicting Spanish artists on the building’s façade confirmed the presence of professionals of this type in the national Parnassus. As a “temple of the arts”, open to the public and educational in intent, the new museum represented a before and after in the relationship between art and society.