Museo Thyssen Bornemisza A WALK THROUGH THE HISTORY OF ART quixote. The Museo Thyssen as a Mirror of Don Quixote
quixote. The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza as a Mirror of Don Quixote is a tour designed to provide a number of windows on the world created by Miguel de Cervantes in his famous novel. Through a selection of works from the Permanent Collection, visitors are given an insight into the most salient episodes of the ingenious knight s adventures and the boundless imagination that leads him to see giants where there are only windmills, the idealised beauty of Dulcinea and Sancho Panza s loyalty and good judgement. There is no direct link between the paintings and the passages of the novel, but many of the literary motifs found in the novel can be reinterpreted through the history of these paintings. This tour has been made possible by the collaboration of the council of Alcalá de Henares. Opening image Georges Michel Landscape with Mill Oil on canvas, 40 52.2 cm Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Back cover Kurt Schwitters Merzbild 1A (The Psychiatrist), 1919. Oil, assemblage and collage of various objects on canvas. 48,5 38,5 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza For further information www.museothyssen.org www.turismoalcala.es www.400cervantes.ayto-alcaladehenares.es
ALONSO QUIJANO BOOKS AS A PARALLEL REALITY Ferdinand Hodler The Reader, ca. 1885 His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books [...] and it so possessed his mind [...] that to him no history of the world had more reality in it. Don Quixote and this reader have in common their age, white hair and bony hands. But their greatest similarity lies in their engrossment in reading, as if the world changed with each word. Indeed, this is how the famous novel begins with an elderly man called Alonso Quijano going mad from devouring hundreds of chivalric novels. Oil on canvas, 31 38 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
DULCINEA DEL TOBOSO IDEAL BEAUTY Domenico Ghirlandaio Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, 1489 90 For her hairs are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows rainbows, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her fairness snow [ ]. Don Quixote feels that a knight without a lady love is like a tree without leaves or a body without a soul. As he has no lady, he invents Dulcinea, his queen, whose beauty is superhuman. Cervantes may have drawn inspiration from portraits like this one to give his character an appearance based on the beauty ideal which the Italian Quatroccento borrowed from classical Antiquity. Mixed media on panel, 77 49 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
SANCHO PANZA FAITHFUL FRIEND AND SQUIRE Giuseppe Maria Crespi Peasants with Donkeys, ca. 1709 Sancho rode on his ass like a patriarch, with his alforjas and bota, and longing to see himself soon governor of the island his master had promised him. In chapter 7 of Part One, Sancho Panza leaves his wife and children to serve Don Quixote as a squire, mounted on a donkey. The eccentric knight convinces the labourer with promises of adventures, excitement and even the possibility of becoming the governor of an island. Sancho Panza lives in the real world that which is portrayed by genre painters but believes him because he too has dreams and hopes of achieving a better life. Oil on copper, 39,4 31,1 cm. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
ICONIC EPISODES CAVALRY SOLDIERS August Macke Hussars on a Sortie, 1913 Come back, Señor Don Quixote; I vow to God they are sheep and ewes you are charging! Come back! Unlucky the father that begot me! What madness is this! Sancho warns his master that there are only two flocks of sheep ahead of them and not two armies about to engage in battle. But Don Quixote, who never hesitates, joins Pentapolin to fight against the powerful Alifanfaron. The speed, frenzy and fragmentation characteristic of the Italian futurist movement also describe the battle as it is seen by the gentleman of La Mancha mounted on Rocinante. Oil on canvas, 37,5 56,1 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
ICONIC EPISODES FIGHTING WITH GIANTS Paul Klee Rotating House, 1921 The fear thou art in, Sancho, said Don Quixote, prevents thee from seeing or hearing correctly, for one of the effects of fear is to derange the senses and make things appear different from what they are. The episode of the fight with the windmills is an act as reckless as it is naïve, as Don Quixote mistakes them for giants. His boundless imagination fuelled by chivalric novels transforms reality into an extraordinary world. This form of relating to his surroundings strongly recalls that of children, and is also visible in the primitive childish schemata Paul Klee reproduces in his works. Oil and pencil on cotton cheesecloth mounted on paper, 37,7 52,2 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
DREAM AND REALITY Yves Tanguy Time and Again, 1942 And then, turning to Sancho, he said, Forgive me, my friend, that I led thee to seem as mad as myself, making thee fall into the same error I myself fell into, that there were and still are knights-errant in the world. Almost at the end of the novel, Don Quixote is defeated by the Knight of the White Moon in a famous setting, the Barceloneta beach. Tanguy s fanciful and unsettling Surrealist painting prompts us to imagine the duel with the vast, endless and horizonless Mediterranean sea as a backdrop. Following his defeat, the ingenious gentleman returned home and, at death s door, finally came to his senses as if he had just awoken from an eternal dream. Oil on canvas, 100 81 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza