Last week the exhibition Spanish Masterpieces from the Frick Collection was inaugurated, which will be at the Museo del Prado until July 2. This is a unique opportunity to see paintings that normally never leave his house, the mansion that Henry Clay Frick built for himself on Fifth Avenue in New York, and now do so in an exceptional way while the building is being remodeled. One of them is the portrait of Felipe IV painted by Velázquez in 1644.
Felipe IV looks at us with a dignified and melancholic expression. Instead of his usual black or hunting clothes, he wears red with bursts of silver fireworks. It's a military suit, but he takes off his hat before us; in his attitude there is nothing heroic or grandiose.
Velázquez painted this portrait after the fall of the Count-Duke of Olivares, at a time when the king ruled directly – effortlessly but decisively, as his right hand holds the command flare. Alarmingly and unexpectedly, Felipe IV decided to move to the front line in the middle of the Reapers War, something that no Spanish monarch had done since the glorious times of his great-grandfather. So in the spring of 1644 Felipe and his court arrived in Fraga, a town on the Ponent strip surrounded by peach fields like those of Alcarràs, to supervise the siege of Lleida from there. With them was also Diego Velázquez, in charge of creating and projecting the image of the king.
We know well how this portrait was painted, one of the best documented paintings of the Spanish 17th century. All eyes were on the king in dangerous and uncomfortable circumstances, so an astonishing amount of detail was recorded in receipts, accounts, and letters.
We know, for example, that on May 2, 1644, Felipe reviewed his troops dressed in the same crimson suit, black hat, and flare that we see in the painting. Velázquez's makeshift studio was a narrow, dark room to which a window had to be made. Velázquez painted slowly, but this time he had to hurry to finish in just three sittings. An undated receipt informs us that the painting was sent in a wooden box to the queen in Madrid. And at the end of July, when the French and rebel troops surrender, something fascinating happens: the king's public persona unfolds. Almost at the same time that the flesh and blood Felipe makes his entry into Lleida, his portrait presides over a religious celebration promoted by "the Catalan nation" in Madrid.
Four years earlier, the Andalusian abbot of Monserrat decided to get away from the war, taking with him a "portrait" of the moreneta, in addition to thirty-three monks, six hermits, fourteen lay brothers and three schoolboys from the monastery who declared themselves loyal to the king. They arrived in Madrid after just over a month traveling on foot in the dead of winter, and Felipe IV immediately built a convent for them on the outskirts, the “Nuevo Monserrate”. These monks became the heart of a community of exiles that the official chronicler, José de Pellicer, refers to on several occasions as “the Catalan nation”. And it seems that this same community was the one that organized the ceremony with the portrait in the church of San Martín, now disappeared, which was then the largest parish in Madrid.
For the crowd that packed the church on August 10, 1644, the portrait of Felipe IV placed under a golden canopy would be the closest thing to a miraculous apparition. This is the only portrait by Velázquez in which Felipe IV looks to the left instead of to the right: if he was placed on the Epistle side (that is, the right, like his seat in the Royal Chapel), in this way the king looked towards the painting of the Virgin of Montserrat that was installed behind the altar, loaned by “the Catalan nation”.
A printed text with the sermon that was preached that day has also come down to us, thanks to which we know what interpretation was given to the painting at the time. One of the king's preachers went up to the pulpit, located in front of the portrait, to explain from there the keys to the image: it is a “beautiful Mars” that inspires respect, love and loyalty; a king who forgives his rebellious subjects instead of triumphing over them; a compassionate father who leaves room for post-conflict rebuilding. In short, the rhetoric of the word and of the image agree to present Felipe IV as the closest thing to the Christian God. A few days later, the news reached the court that the king had renewed his oath to respect the privileges and special institutions of Aragon and Catalonia.
At the end of the party, the king's portrait disappears French-style, leaving behind a smell of gunpowder and incense. We do not know anything about him again until the middle of the following century, when the Infante Felipe de Borbón took him to Parma. After strolling through various Central European castles, it ended up in the hands of the dealer Knoedler, who sold it to Frick in 1911. And in 1941, a reproduction of the painting made a very brief cameo behind Humphrey Bogart in the lobby of the Belvedere Hotel, in The Maltese Falcon. It is worth going to Madrid just to see this exceptional painting.
Spanish masterpieces from the Frick Collection. Prado Museum. Madrid. www.museodelprado.es. Until July 2nd.
