Joanna I of Castile by Francisco Pradilla, 1877. Recorded live January 19, 2022
hello good morning and welcome to the prada museum in madrid spain we’re continuing our wednesday morning series of short conversations in english thanks to the help of the american friends of the prado museum the american friends is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the museum and helping share the treasures in this collection in as many ways as we can in a number of different projects like this one and today we have the pleasure of being in one of the newly rearranged 19th century rooms the collection of 19th century painting at the prado is the largest in size but at the same time it’s perhaps the least well known in the museum and in part this is because the majority of these paintings were in the modern art museum until 1971 when they were incorporated into the prado but they were not on display in this building they were on display in the cason de buen retiro de cason is another building on the prado’s campus and today you can find the museum’s amazing library there and they stayed there in the cason until the remodeling of this building of the villanueva building between 2007 and 2009 and they’ve been here since and today we’ll be having a look at one brilliant painting from 1877 by francisco pradilla the prominent genre of the 19th century collection is history painting and the prado has as we can see here some of the most magnificent examples history painting was traditionally considered by art academies to be the highest form within the hierarchy of genres it demanded an enormous amount of technical skill a judicious selection of of an episode and expertise and academic art principles to be able to handle such a large format and francisco pradea was a leading artist in this genre he was born in 1848 in saragosa and he trained in the fine arts academy there and then later in the royal academy of fine arts in madrid and during his time as a student here he spent a lot of time in the prado at this museum copying the paintings that he saw as part of his education as a painter he spent time training in rome and while he was there he painted this enormous canvas of joanna the first also known as joanna the mad or wanalaloka now joanna the first was the daughter of king ferdinand and queen isabel who were the catholic kings and she was married to felipe el hermoso philip the handsome now there are so many stories about joanna’s life and not all of them are entirely true but the tradition or the legend says that joanna fell madly in love with her husband and that he aside from being very handsome was also very unfaithful so joanna suffered a lot with this relationship and when he died just a few years later joanna became insane as a result of her heartbreak and because of her condition because of this condition her father ferdinand sent her to a convent and ruled on her behalf so joanna was really only nominally queen and she had no prominent role in government and it seems that she didn’t even have control over her home her own life after her father passed away her son charles the first of spain charles v of germany continued to rule in her place and she remained in the convent now more recent studies are hesitant to categorize joanna in this simplistic and dramatic way and and even question if she suffered any mental illness at all the reasons for her confinement may have been much more politically motivated than the legend would have us think but regardless of the truth pradiya found the figure of joanna fascinating and he even became somewhat obsessed with her he depicted her several times over his career she really was a personality that combined all of the traits that were appealing to the 19th century mindset passionate and unrequited love jealousy and insanity brought on by love sickness and predia is painting a very specific scene here that was described by the 16th century chronicler peter martyr of angleria this is when the funeral procession brought philip’s body from borgos to granada where he would be buried the group would travel at night and stop to rest in monasteries during the day along the way where they would hold funerals in the different towns that they passed through and the chronicler reported that joanna was very jealous and she did not want any woman to be near the body and at one point when she realized that they had stopped in a convent with nuns she ordered that the whole entourage leave and hold the funeral of that day outdoors we can see the convent right there and so this is what we are seeing the outdoor funeral with the convent in the background and if we look at the whole scene we can see that joanna really really dominates the scene she’s wearing a black velvet dress and a veil and if we get close we can see that she actually has on two wedding rings and this indicates all of this indicates her status as a widow we can also see that she’s pregnant we can see a little bit of a bump in her stomach and she would have been carrying her daughter at this time catalina of aragon if we look at her expression her gaze is lost mesmerized engrossed or mad and notice the details of the flames of the candles if we come over here we can see the flames and we can imagine the wind the cold of that day the biting winter cold although it doesn’t seem like joanna is noticing this temperature at all she also doesn’t notice the discomfort of the rest of her company if we look at the faces of the entourage that are sitting here they show a mixture of boredom resignation fatigue the intensity of the landscape in the atmosphere really adds to the emotional tension of the scene which we could describe as ominous broody unsettling even ghostly empredia achieves this highly realistic representation with uh extensive and and defined continue okay pardee achieves this highly realistic representation with extensive and defined preparatory drawing but then he makes the style more personal with the the became known as the pradiya style let’s get close and look at a detail of this look for example at the the precise way that he paints the handles of the beard which is the the stand that the casket is resting on or the hands of this person here and then we can compare that to the unrestrained and abundant painting and in the flames they’re saying the baby is getting close i wonder if everybody’s following us right now are we having trouble with connection okay let’s see one second i think we’re having a few technical problems please confirm can anyone confirm that they’re listening are we good all right let’s continue so we were looking at the the rich and free application of paint for example in the flames and in the wax that is falling down we can also see the flames in the fire over here and the smoke that comes up and even in the ground i think we have a few technical issues so i hope everybody’s able to hear today’s presentation we’ll try to continue and i hope everyone can hear so joanna would have been a natural choice for history one one more second we’re looking for a good place to have so fake service here right the walls are thick and so it’s it’s hard to have reception down here i think from here all right sure so so joanna’s story was a natural option for the subject of history painting and like i said history painting was really the mark of excellence of the 19th century spanish school and and this is really one of the most captivating most striking history paintings and and without a doubt one of pradilla’s masterpieces so it is no surprise that this was an instant hit and this really is the painting that that launched pradea to fame both in spain and throughout europe and we have in this room if you come here you can see it i think we can’t go there because we’ll lose our reception but we do have a sketch a preparatory sketch of the painting that you can see on our website or you can see in person if you can come to visit the museum one day and i do believe there’s going to be an announcement soon about um the centennial of pradia’s death i think there’s going to be a small exhibit an interesting exhibit and a small room nearby so hopefully we’ll have a new announcement on the website about that soon and thank you so much for joining us today i hope you’ve enjoyed having a few minutes of looking at this wonderful past masterpiece by pradiga i encourage you to come see in person if you can if you can’t you can always find out more on our website and you can find out more about the american friends of the prada museum the foundation amigos and thank you for joining and we’ll see you again for more bye
American Friends helps share the collection of the Prado Museum in Spain by adding live sessions in English to the museum’s social media programming as of September 2021.
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