BILBAO.- For the first time, the Guest Work programme, now in its 64th edition, presents three paintings signed by three universal figures in Spanish art-El Greco, Vel醶quez and Goya-which were assembled by Carmen Mara耋n-Fern醤dez de Araoz (San Sebasti醤, 1912-Madrid, 2005). The daughter of Dr Gregorio Mara耋n (Madrid, 1887–1960), she promoted numerous cultural initiatives throughout her life, including the Fundaci髇 Gregorio Mara耋n and the Real Fundaci髇 de Toledo.
Dr Mara耋n was an authority in studies on endocrinology and other medical disciplines and one of the most prominent Spanish humanists and intellectuals of the past century. He assembled an interesting art collection, one of whose gems was Francisco de Goya's Lazarillo de Tormes (c.1808-1810), and his publications included the essay 'El Greco and Toledo' from 1956. That same year, his speech upon entering the San Fernando Royal Fine Arts Academy (Madrid) also discussed the painter from Crete.
That same Goya painting was inherited years later by his daughter Carmen, who had married the politician Alejandro Fern醤dez de Araoz-the governor of the Bank of Spain during the Second Republic-and she also inherited El Greco's Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1594-1604) and Diego Vel醶quez's The Nun Jer髇ima de la Fuente (1620) from her husband.
These three masterpieces are now on display in the museum, accompanied by the Portrait of Carmen Mara耋n painted by Ignacio Zuloaga in 1931. This Basque artist had close ties to the family and was a good friend of Dr Mara耋n. In addition to Carmen, Zuloaga also painted portraits of her husband and the doctor, three times, whom he regularly visited in his house-museum in Santiago Etxea in Zumaia (Gipuzkoa), where some of the greatest intellectuals of the era met, such as the philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset.
Saint Francis of Assisi is one of the most prominent penitent saints in the iconography of El Greco, who painted different episodes in his life on several occasions. In the painting Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1594–1604, oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm), he is depicted with enormous expressiveness and an undefined background while praying and at the time the saint casts his gaze heavenward before receiving the stigmata. He is wearing a coarse habit tied with a rope with the three knots that symbolise the three vows of the Franciscan order, and he is accompanied by a cross and a skull, elements of meditation. He thus embodies one of the values of the Counter-Reformation, salvation through repentance, prayer and penitence.
Vel醶quez's The Nun Jer髇ima de la Fuente (1620, oil on canvas, 150 x 105 cm) is one of the few portraits of females in the painter's oeuvre; he painted the nun's image on three canvases commissioned by the Santa Isabel la Real congregation of Toledo upon Sister Jer髇ima's journey to Manila to found the Santa Clara de la Concepci髇 convent. This painting, just like the one conserved in the Prado Museum, shows her full-body holding a crucifix in her right hand and a book in her left. The sitter's steady personality and life experience are thus reflected with the masterful naturalism that the young Vel醶quez managed to convey in his compositions from those early years.
In Lazarillo de Tormes (c.1808-1810, oil on canvas, 102.5 x 83 cm) Goya refers not only to one of the peak novels in Spanish picaresque literature-with the same title by an anonymous author-but also to the paintings of vagabonds and indigent people, some of them children, which had already garnered success for painters like Murillo. He captures the landscape where the cruel blind man smells the breath of the child helping him only to find out that he had indeed secretly eaten the sausage he was cooking. Here, Goya uses an almost expressionistic style and the dark palette of his 'Black Paintings' (1819-1823). On an interesting note, following his scientific spirit, Dr Mara耋n interpreted the painting as an allusion to the respiratory inflammation caused by diphtheria, commonly known as the 'croup'.
