The Trip: Day 4

We went to the Prado this morning. They rent out audio tours there so everywhere you go there are people standing around with these purple boxes held up to their ear. The other thing about the Prado is that it is so popular that tourists are dropped off by the busload. People who don´t even seem to care about art running around the museum as if they have a mental checklist of all the things they have to glance at before they go. As if once they´ve been in every room they can safely claim intimate knowledge of the Prado to friends back home. The worst are the Japanese. They walk around talking and shouting across the room, without actually looking at the paintings.

My favored method of seeing art museums is to give a fairly cursory look at most of the paintings and then return to the ones I like. I try not to look at the name of the painter until after I have made judgements about the painting.

Some highlights: My favorite section was the Northern Renaissance. This is a period I´ve never been much into, probably because it doesn´t translate well to book form. Anyway they had some spectacular tryptics and other wood panels that were beautiful in their intricacy and their detail. They also had a great self-portrait of Durer--the one from when he was younger with the beard. It´s definitely much better than in pictures.

They also have a great collection of Spainiards--in particular El Greco, Velasquez, and Goya. I gained a new appreciation for all three. I´ve never been a big fan of El Greco--and its hard to not prejudge the work because his style is so distinctive. Obviously you can´t walk up to an El Greco and think I wonder who painted this. Anyway, I really enjoyed a painting of St. Jerome that he did and that opened me up to enjoying some of his other work.

They also have a great deal of Titian--I think he moved to Spain at some point. I liked his work more than I ever have. It took me a while to figure ot who it was since his name in Spanish is Tiziano.

We had a barbecue today. It was a lot of fun. There were 10-12 people and at least 15 different kinds of meat. We set up the sawhorses and boards in the backyard and had a great time. There were four differen types of sausage, 5 different kinds of pork, chicken, chorizo, among others. We sat outside and talked then had coffee and sat outside some more. THe barbecue lasted a good 5 hours.

More later...

PS It may be a few days as we are going south for the week...I will try to at least post a short update.

PPS It appears we won´t be going to Paris...It´s just outside our budget. We were looking forward to it...oh well


More Later...