The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  “That’s it,” murmured Fovel. “The horseman. Have you seen that he’s also there in the letter V?”

  I glanced at the paper, frowning, not entirely sure.

  “Brueghel’s horse bore only one spectral rider, but his fierce expression, sparse hair blowing, macabre horizontal grimace, and the stance of his nag left little doubt that the two images were connected.”

  Fovel was encouraging. “There! Now you have another letter. Keep going!”

  Suddenly I realized it had become an addictive game. As my brain worked to familiarize myself with the various deathly figures that populate Holbein’s alphabet, I tried to locate them in Brueghel’s composition.

  Letter V of Holbein’s alphabet and detail of The Triumph of Death.

  I found the soldier battling Death himself, who could be the embodiment of the letter P. The cardinal fallen prey to the sword from the letter E, which appears almost unchanged in the painting.

  For some reason, Fovel urged me to redouble my efforts among the mass of figures in the area around the doors of the great container of hell. “The key to what we’re seeking has to be there,” he whispered in my ear. “Of all of them, this is the most important area of the entire painting, for it is here that we find the last living mortals on earth.”

  So I did as he asked and after a few minutes, I unearthed two more connections.

  One was a figure who has his head covered and his face up to the sky, pleading for mercy.

  The Master linked him to the letter I.

  The other letter, which took me much longer to find, came via a skeleton emptying an extravagant metallic water container, which Fovel showed me to be the T from Holbein’s alphabet.

  “So, now, what do we have?” said Fovel in satisfaction.

  “Four letters,” I replied, “A, V, I, T.”

  Letters I and T of Holbein’s alphabet and details of The Triumph of Death.

  “What do you get from that?”

  I strained my memory for any trace of my high school Latin and offered a couple of lame suggestions that just made Fovel laugh.

  “No, Javier, no. It has nothing to do with birds or even grandfathers. Think! You’ve uncovered four letters that encircle the last living human beings, people who are being driven into hell, devoid of all hope. What if Brueghel was hiding the very secret of his faith in these four letters? And what if, right at the point of the greatest desolation in the entire composition, the point with which the viewer—any viewer—would most identify, what if it was exactly there that our Brueghel was shouting out the very remedy?”

  I stared at Fovel, astonished. He had suddenly turned and locked his eyes onto mine and his gaze was burning. I sensed his lips barely quivering, as if what he was about to say was extremely important. “Javier,” he began, “if you play with these letters and reorder them with the horse going first, then the imploring man and the skeleton with the water container, and finally the musicians, you’ll have what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “V-I-T-A,” I spelled out “Vita—life!”

  “And what can you tell me about the way the letters are placed? Vita—life—comes down from the sky to earth, from above to the ground, and then returns once again, rising again. Just like this game of letters. Isn’t it a beautiful lesson? The perfect prophecy? After the pain and terror of death, waiting, hidden—is more life!”

  I stood there unable to speak, not even knowing what to think. Mute and perplexed, unable to make sense of the Master’s conclusions or properly accept the lesson in occult art that I’d just been given. And Fovel, aware that he had completely saturated my senses, clapped me on the back in a kind of commiseration.

  “You’re young still,” he said, seemingly exhausted by the whole effort. “Death does not yet concern you. But when, in some years, it captures your attention, then you’ll want to know more about this.”

  “Are there more paintings with messages written like this?”

  “There are, Javier. All around us.”

  15

  * * *

  EL GRECO’S “OTHER HUMANITY”

  I don’t think I ever felt as much doubt in my times at the Prado as I did that afternoon. My instinct urged me to remember every detail that I’d learned about the paintings we’d just discussed, but my head felt ready to explode, so the effort was useless.

  Dragged along by an increasingly harried Doctor Fovel, in no time at all I found myself whisked from the Bosch gallery to the gallery upstairs that housed the works of El Greco. At first, I wasn’t sure where he was taking me, but when I saw him quicken his pace down the corridor leading to the collection of Doménikos Theotokópoulos’s exaggeratedly elongated figures, a strange unease came over me. If this was where we were headed, the progression of my learning was going to take a profound leap, unless Fovel had uncovered some subtle connection that linked Flemish painters to this exotic Greek who had settled in Toledo and had always been known for following his own path.

  Our destination turned out to be not one gallery but three rooms in a row in the Eastern Wing of the museum. As we approached the doors of this sanctuary, just a stone’s throw from Velázquez’s Maids of Honor and The Triumph of Bacchus, I noticed that the Master hesitated, cautiously looking in both directions before entering, without a word.

  Fovel stopped in front of El Greco’s brooding Pentecost, and, as if unsure about whether to warn me about what lay ahead, muttered another “Ready?” that just unsettled me more.

  I nodded uneasily.

  “Javier, I’m afraid that the painting that illustrates what I’m about to tell you is not here, but hangs in the monastery at El Escorial. You really should go and see it.”

  “Is it an El Greco?” I asked naïvely, noticing his Resurrection visible at the end of the galleries.

  “It is indeed. But it’s not just any El Greco, Javier. It’s a painting that many critics think proves that this genius among geniuses admired and imitated the contemplative paintings of Bosch and Brueghel, like the ones I’ve just shown you.

  “But, Doctor, you’ve never paid much attention to the critics,” I pointed out.

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “However, the painting I want to talk about is for me primarily proof of something much more important. Something which, if we didn’t have it, would leave us with an incomplete and mistaken understanding of the works that surround us here, and above all, the piece of evidence that shows that Doménikos Theotokópoulos—known in Philip’s court as El Greco—was no less than a distinguished member of the apocalyptic fraternity of the Familia Caritatis. Another artist for whom paintings served principally as repositories of a revolutionary credo that prophesied the arrival of a new humanity and of direct communication with the invisible. Let’s not forget—El Greco was a mystic before he was ever a painter.”

  “Which painting do you mean, Doctor?” I asked, my curiosity now stimulated by this revelation.

  El Greco, The Dream of Philip II, or The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, An Allegory of the Holy League, and The Glory (ca. 1577). Monastery of El Escorial, Madrid.

  “In El Escorial everyone calls it The Dream of Philip II. Unlike the Bosch paintings, it hangs in the original location chosen for it by Philip the Prudent. But don’t judge it on the basis of that name. You and I have already discussed what happens with the titles of these paintings—hardly any of them are chosen by the original artists!”

  “I like paintings with many names,” I said. Thanks to my time with Fovel, I’d learned that the more names a painting had, the more mysteries it was likely to hold.

  “Well, this one takes the cake,” said Fovel. “It’s called everything from The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, because in the top half of the painting you can see the anagram IHS, to An Allegory of the Holy League, because the bottom half includes portraits of Philip’s principal allies in the fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto: Pope Pius V, the Doge of Venice, and John of Austria. However, I don’t find any of these tit
les quite adequate. My own favorite, which you’ll understand right away, is the one the monks of El Escorial gave to the painting upon first seeing it—El Greco’s Glory.”

  “You mean like Titian’s?”

  He smiled broadly. “Exactly. And it’s important that you understand why.”

  Fovel then proceeded to lay out a fascinating story. Even though the painting wasn’t signed and there was no document or contract from the time that could verify when it was painted, many art experts believed that it was done right after El Greco arrived in Madrid in 1577. In fact, according to the Master, it was the first painting he did in Spain.

  Doménikos had had a mixed reception in Italy, where he’d immersed himself in the work of the Venetians, Titian, Tintoretto, and Correggio, and had also been influenced by the later work of the great Michelangelo. But upon reaching his thirtieth year, he began to set his sights higher.

  “It was at this point in his life,” Fovel declared theatrically, “that Fate decided to smile upon him.”

  While no one can say how it happened, Fovel seemed sure that while in Rome, El Greco had crossed paths with a rather dejected Benito Arias Montano who, as if placed there by Fate, became El Greco’s mentor. The man who was to become El Escorial’s librarian had come to the Eternal City to try to convince the papal authorities to approve the Biblia Regia project. Montano was already a distinguished member of Familia Caritatis, and winning the Vatican’s approval was as vital to him as it was to his fellow initiates, who were involved with the printer Christophe Plantin. Getting it would advance their aim of a unio Cristiana, the fusion of all churches, which would also put them closer to Hendrik Niclaes’s ultimate secret aim of presenting himself as the Messiah of the new humanity.

  But something went wrong. In Spain, professors at the University of Salamanca were suspicious of some of the translations and of the fact that Montano cited the Talmud as a respectable source. These suspicions reached the Holy See, and the pope ultimately frustrated the plan.

  It was then that Montano and El Greco met, most likely through the circle they both frequented that existed around Doménikos’s patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. El Greco had befriended the Cardinal’s librarian, Fulvio Orsini, and he was probably the one who introduced him to Montano. Things proceeded from there. Seeing El Greco’s work, the Spaniard persuaded him to come to Madrid to work on the ambitious decoration of the monastery at El Escorial. This was during Philip II’s obsession with the artistic side of his great project, and they needed all the help they could get. Sometime between late 1576 and early 1577, newly arrived in Spain and keen to win the king’s favor, El Greco painted The Glory.

  The Master continued his lesson. “It’s not hard to imagine Doménikos wandering through the monastery taking in all of the king’s favorite paintings, with no one to talk to in Greek save for Montano. There were a few Bosch works in the royal chambers, as well as Brueghel’s Triumph of Death, and I’m sure that as a notable Familist, Montano would have shown El Greco how to interpret it and asked him to paint a version of his own.”

  “So that’s how El Greco came to be part of the court?” I asked.

  “Yes, son; more or less. The Glory of El Greco certainly didn’t go unnoticed. But according to Brother Sigüenza, the monastery’s historian, the king didn’t like it. Or to be more precise, it ‘failed to please his Majesty.’ Even though it made use of some of his Majesty’s most beloved symbols: a great apparition directly above the king’s head, implying heavenly witness; a clear division of the just from the sinners; even a great, one-eyed monster that devours the souls of the sinful, all very much in the style of the Flemish painters.”

  “And not just them,” I interjected.

  Fovel raised one eyebrow. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  There was moment of discomfort as I tried to gauge the wisdom of introducing something pretty far outside Fovel’s syllabus. Finally, I decided to risk it.

  “I’m referring to the ancient Egyptians, Doctor.”

  His face took on a puzzled expression.

  “I’m very interested in ancient Egypt and, as it happens I’m also quite familiar with the painting you mean; it’s one of El Greco’s most famous. I think there’s a parallel here. The idea of a monster devouring sinners behind the king’s back appears in the pharaohs’ religious texts several times going back at least three thousand years!”

  Fovel rewarded me with an attentive look. He didn’t contradict or hush me; on the contrary, he looked interested in what I was saying. After all those times being his student and learning from him, seeing his look of surprise felt to me like a small triumph. Since I had never mentioned it, he couldn’t have known that I had this passionate interest in the ancient culture of the pyramids.1

  I grinned at him. “Don’t make that face, Doctor! In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which is over thirty-five hundred years old, there’s a scene with a monster just like El Greco’s. They would use scrolls of parchment that they placed underneath the head of the cadaver as a kind of map to the hereafter. No two of these were exactly the same, and yet—guess what? One scene that was repeated without fail in all of these texts for the dead was that of the diabolical monster!”

  Fovel stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, El Greco’s monster may not have its origins in the Bible . . .”

  “It doesn’t. But there’s another connection with our sixteenth-century painting that comes to mind. El Greco’s painting deals with the idea of a final judgment of the dead. The Egyptians ‘invented’ the whole notion of a tribunal of souls long before the Jews or Christian ever began to mention it. Their pictures place the monster in the middle of the trials that the pharaohs faced on their journey from the earthly to the eternal life. It would serve as witness while Anubis, the god with the head of a jackal, would place the soul of the pharaoh on a scale to determine whether or not it held sin. If it did, Ammit, the devourer of souls, would open her enormous gullet wide and gobble up the pharaoh, denying him eternal life. There was nothing the Egyptians feared more than Ammit.”

  Fovel seemed captivated by my lesson, and pressed me for details.

  “How is it that between the Egyptians and El Greco no one has painted this Ammit?” he asked.

  “Actually that’s not entirely true,” I replied. “The builders of the great Gothic cathedrals included the weighing-of-the-soul scene in many of their façades. They would put the saved souls on one side of the scale, and the condemned souls on the other. In fact, if you recall El Greco’s Glory, the blessed are to the left of the monster, entering a sort of divine doorway. So the only real difference between the Egyptians and the builders of the cathedrals is that the builders substituted an angel for Anubis.”

  Fovel smiled. “Excellent! I’m delighted that you’re able to connect two disparate visual elements and wonder about their origins.”

  “You know, Doctor, every time I come across these traces of Egyptian icons in western culture, I wonder how these transcendental symbols get transmitted from civilization to civilization, from religion to religion, across thousands of years!”

  “That is indeed a great mystery,” agreed Fovel, without taking his eyes off The Annunciation, which we were now facing. “That drive to trace the various sources of art reminds me of discussions about which traditions could be the sources for both the Brethren of the Free Spirit and the Familists. I participated in a number of them, and came to my own conclusions.”

  “Were you able to find a common source for both of those heretical movements?”

  “Think about the Familia Caritatis, which had such an impact on Montano and, then later, El Greco,” said Fovel, tapping his temple with his forefinger. “Its members felt part of a minority faith that believed it had surpassed all other religions. In contrast to Christians or Jews, for example, they preached a direct relationship to God. They believed that the Creator dwells in each of us, so that there is no need to appeal to the divine to invoke his presence. W
hat’s interesting is that we find all that two hundred years earlier, in the Cathar faith, and even before that among the Gnostics, in the earliest days of Christianity.

  “We now know that the Familists that Brueghel associated with were one of the last glimmers of Catharism in history.2 In fact, the Familists called themselves the Family of Love, since the Cathars had previously named themselves the Church of Love, in opposition to Rome. Notice that, in Spanish, amor—‘love’—is Roma backward.”

  I jumped in. “So the Cathars are the source? The most persecuted heretics of the entire Middle Ages?”

  “The Good Men, yes, the Bons Hommes,” he replied. “All massacred in the South of France in 1244 by troops loyal to the pope. Their ideas and beliefs had spread throughout much of Europe: that nature was the product of dark forces, that the corporeal, material world was no more than a prison for the soul. They also believed that there was not just one creator—God—but also an evil Demiurge, arguing that a tangible universe so fragile and corrupt could not be the product of one single, perfect, and supreme maker. They had many followers. They also agitated tirelessly for the translation of the Bible from Latin into the vernacular languages, a mission that would not bear fruit until the first polyglot Bibles of Cardinal Cisneros and Montano.

  “But, Javier, what earned them the worst persecution ever seen of Christians by Christians—and which helped launch the infamous Inquisition with all of its terrible practices—was their belief that we all carry within us in our mortal bodies a part of the divine spirit which allows us to communicate with God. Directly. Without the need for intermediaries. Needless to say, that meant the church. It is this that inspires all those paintings of mystics, kings, and biblical characters who behold in the distance the intangible, pure world. The one created by the good God.”