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Las Meninas by Velazquez

The painting “las Meninas” (the maids of honour) is Velazquez supreme achievement. The central figure is the five year old infanta Margarita, daughter of Phillips the fourth and his second wife, who are reflected in the wall mirror. The girl is attended by two maids of honour. The two court dwarfs stand behind the large dog, a lady and a male officer are in conversation and a member of the queens staff can be seen trough the doorway at the end of the room. Valazquez himself, palette and brush in the hand, stands at the canvas. All the figures belong to the royal house, including the painter, who has the high rank of chimberlin. The painting seems to be just about a sudden moment in daily life, yet there is meaning. It is the painters intention to stop time for ever at a certain moment. The disposition of the figures and the artist’s neutral uninvolved attitude towards them are such that the painting has often to be seen as a snapshot. The junxtaposition of the akward dwarfs are underlining the beauty off the infanta and her attendants. The naturalism of these figures is further set off by contrast with the dim reflexions in the looking glass and the paintings above. The rectangular pictorial space provides a framework within which the figures seem to have come together accidentally, without being composed at all. They are unified by their relationship not to one other but to the spectator standing in position apparently occupied by the king and queen, whose reflexion appear in the looking glass. In this way the spectator becomes pasrt of the painting. Quite genial. Another meaning is the status of the painter. Painting himself as a court official wearing his badge of office, keys in his belt. Two years later he was indeed admitted to the proudest of all noble orders, that of S lago, who’s cross was later painted on his breast.

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The third of may by Goya

The third of may 1808 was painted just after the restoration of the Spanish bourbon monarchy in 1814, to commemorate the beginning of the Spanish was of liberation, and evidentely intended to suggest that the men who were shot didn’t die in vain. Yet, the painting has a deep meaning of a secular martyrdom, one without any hope that the manifest evils of this world will be rightd in the next. The only source of illumination is the soldiers gigantic Latern, a symbol of the remorseless logic of the enlightenment, in which Spanish intellectueals like Goya, had earlier placed their hopes of salvation. Everything seems to have failed, the Enlightment as much as the church, represented by the towers in the background and the monk amonst the condemned. Only the individual artist and his vision remain to give meaning to a chaotic world. Goyas vision was already embittered and violent by 1814 to permit any relief from the horror of the subject.

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Garden of Earthly delights by Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights consists of three panels: left panel is called Garden of Eden, middle panel is called The world before the flood the right panel Hell. It’s the finest but also the most perplexing of his works. In the late sixteenth century the painting was also called Lust or Strawberry painting. The painting depicts the origin, indulgence and punishment of sin. The painter streeses fraily and wicketness, not the beauty and nobility of man. The pleasures of flesh are condemned. Musical instruments are for Bosch the agents of the devil, therfor you see the instruments depicted. The painters vision of hell is not a compilation of symbols but a truly vision. A hallucianating unbounded fluid space ssen from far away and above. The depiction is rather new, in the chaotic area between the forground and the burning buildings in the horizon, human figures, demons and various strange objects seem to float all depicted with a good precision and sense of form, which gives them a weird reality. Bosh was greatly admired by Phillips the second.

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Guernica by Picasso

Guernica is a Bask village that got bombed by the German Lufgtwaffe in 1937. it was meant to destroy the Basks who where fighting on the side of the republicans in the civil war, although it is also said that they bombed the village to test the weapons. Guernica was painted as a reaction of the destruction caused by the fascistic coup by Franco. It was expeosed at the Expo in Paris. Picasso choosed to express the cruelties in a non-realistic style. This was usual for painting with a more or less political message. Picasso used black-white grey tunes and kubism, which fitted in the oeuvre of this period. There was a debate on what depicts reality the best: realism or kubism. In realism the painter can only show what the eye can see from one perspective. Kubism on the other hand can show more perspectives at the same object. Using kubism in geurnica enabled the painter to show the cruelties from different angles. Guernica is not a painting about the event itself, but is about the whole war, it is a prophetic vision of destruction, a theme that was important also in the later period of nuclear warfare. There is symboilic in the painting. The mother with the dead child reminds of Piëta, the woman with the lamp, the hand of the warrior that holds the sword are symbols of heroic resistance. The bull symbolized the powers of evil and darkness.

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Saturm eating one of his sons by Goya

The painting depicts Saturn eating one of his sons. The head and part of the left arm are already eaten. The god is about to take another bite, his mouth gapes and his eyes are full of madness. The painting is inspired by Ruben;s Saturn eating his son. There are several themes in the picture. The conflict of youth and old age, the wrath of God and the situation in Spain where the country consumed it owns children in war. Goya painted the Saturn originally for the wall of his house. It was one of the black paintings, a serie of paintings done after his exclusion from the court. Depressed and in poor health Goya lived a s a paria outside Madrid. The new rulers in spain considered Goya as a traitor. The black paintings featured dark and violent images. Goya was also ill, which gave him this darker outlook. The painting “Saturn Devouring His Children” shows a scene from Greek mythology. Saturn, or Cronos, is the representation of time. Killing his own sons symbolizes how time both creates and destroys. In the myth, Saturn’s wife, desperate for her new child to succeed, gave Saturn a rock wrapped in rags instead of the infant. Saturn ate the rock and spared the child, who usurps his father and becomes King of the Gods.As the paiting was done at the walls, it got transferred to the Prado after Goya's death, put on canvas.