The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  “I’ve never heard the name.”

  “How about Tommaso Inghirami, Pope Julius II’s personal librarian?”

  “No.”

  “They were the two who introduced Raphael to Pope Julius II’s court at the urging of Raphael’s countryman, Donato Bramante. They were also the ones who essentially directed the plan for the School of Athens frescoes. Both were followers of Marsilio Ficino, that erudite Florentine who, as you may know, translated the works of Plato and Hermes Trismegistus, sparking off a seemingly limitless enthusiasm at the time for the lost teachings of antiquity, or at least those which conformed to Christian doctrine.

  “Ficino was in effect the man who invented the Renaissance from his academy in Careggi during the time of Cosimo de’ Medici.6 It was he who introduced the notion that philosophers ought to ground themselves in science first, and observe the rule of ‘physics before metaphysics,’ as it were. His followers believed that the material and the visible world contained the hidden door through which one gained access to the spiritual and the invisible. Indeed, to God.7 And Raphael learned to paint alongside them, under that supreme proposition.”

  “So you’re saying that Raphael’s paintings are gateways to the spiritual world?”

  “Exactly. In the same way as the great Gothic cathedrals erected by the master builders of the twelfth century are.”8

  “But then this is an idea that goes way back,” I objected.

  He nodded. “Actually, even back to prehistoric times. If you go back forty thousand years ago, to when people were living in caves, they were already painting images on the cave walls as a way to gain access to other worlds. They valued what little art there was for its practical use more than for its aesthetic merit, as it was able to create scenes and symbols that could often conjure up the supernatural. They had to learn to look with the soul rather than just the eyes.”

  “And Raphael? Did he succeed in opening those . . . gateways?”

  Fovel lifted his hand and slowly smoothed back his hair, looking as if he were thinking of the best way to explain the next idea to me.

  “Back in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, everyone accepted that only the artists and intellectuals of the time—as well as the insane—were occasionally able to achieve mystical heights. They were, in a sense, viewed as the keepers of the keys to the beyond, who could unite the terrestrial and divine worlds.”

  “Like a medium,” I suggested.

  “This is an area where it behooves us to choose our words carefully, my boy,” said Fovel. “But, yes, they were something like that. It was assumed then that any sublime human creation must involve or be directed by the higher spheres. It was from these that all order and harmony came. Ficino wrote a great deal about this, and we know that he himself received supernatural communications.9 This mystery was studied by the great wise men of the church, like Thomas Aquinas. And you can be sure that Raphael’s new Roman sponsors made sure he knew of the connection and how to use it.”

  “It all sounds pretty convincing,” I said.

  “It is, and I can prove it to you. I mentioned the librarian, Tommaso Inghirami.”

  I nodded, curious to see where this was going.

  “Well, in 1509, while Raphael was in the middle of painting the School of Athens frescoes, he took a few days off to paint Inghirami’s portrait. In this painting, Raphael’s Neoplatonist friend is depicted with markedly crossed eyes. Now, this is the very same defect that we see years later, in the possessed child in Raphael’s The Transfiguration. According to the symbolic code of the time, that particular characteristic represented the access that both child and sage—both with this special gaze—had to supernatural sources of knowledge. Both of these figures attained the spiritual realm—one through study, resorting occasionally to divination and various other sources of hidden knowledge, and the other through raptures.”

  “That’s outrageous,” I exclaimed. “If I accept what you’re saying, then I have to believe that half of all the great men of the time were basically mystics, illuminati: Blessed Amadeo, the pope’s librarian—and of course Raphael.”

  He shook his head. “Not half—all of them! And not just the great men, my boy. According to this Neoplatonist doctrine of Ficino’s that was drummed into Raphael by his mentors Inghirami and da Viterbo, man is ‘a rational soul that participates in the divine mind, but employs a physical body.’10 His mission in descending to earth is no less than to be the ‘the bond that unites God and the world.’11 And as far as Amadeo—” Here Fovel relaxed his tone somewhat. “There’s something that I have not told you that connects Raphael indisputably to The New Apocalypse . . .”

  “What’s that?” I was intrigued.

  Raphael, Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami (1509). Palatine Gallery, Florence.

  “The painting of The Transfiguration. The original is hanging in the Vatican. You ought to go and see it.”

  “I’m afraid that’s a bit far, Doctor,” I said with a sigh.

  “No matter. You’re in luck—there’s an excellent copy of it painted by his disciple Giovanni Francesco Penni right here in this museum, as it happens. Vasari said that it was Raphael’s ‘great work,’ his ‘most divine and most beautiful.’ I tend to agree. Actually, no other painting in history does a better job of showing how the visible and invisible worlds are connected.”

  “But there are plenty of paintings that show the celestial world above and the physical world below it,” I objected.

  “True. But The Transfiguration contains secret knowledge that you don’t see anywhere else. This philosophy explains how the two worlds can interact using man as the connector, just as Ficino and his academy postulated.”

  I listened to this with a measure of incredulity. “Are you saying that The Transfiguration is a kind of treatise on how to communicate with the divine?”

  “Why not give it a try? Stand in front of the painting and follow my pointers and you’ll see. All right—in the lower half, you see the apostles in discussion about a boy who looks to be about twelve years old and who appears possessed. He has the special gaze. Above all, pay attention to how the boy is raising one arm to the heavens, while he points the other hand to the ground, in what is a clear expression of his function as an intermediary between the two worlds. Once again, you won’t find this scene in the Bible. Nowhere does it describe a scene where a possessed boy was with the apostles at the foot of Mount Tabor.

  Giovanni Francesco Penni, The Transfiguration (a copy of the original by Raphael) (1520). The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  “Nonetheless, there’s Matthew sitting with a book open next to him and with his feet not touching the ground, which is telling us that our traditional ways of thinking are not going to help us here in understanding the transcendent. Matthew is looking at a woman, who herself provides an important clue. The woman, who is kneeling in the foreground with her back to us, is an allegory for sophia, ‘wisdom,’ from the ancient Greeks. She points to the one bedeviled, or possessed. The painting seems to be telling us that wisdom—the woman—directs us to the key that enables us to move between the two worlds. The boy is the key. Of course, not everyone sees it the same way. Judas regards the boy with suspicion. As does Simon the Zealot, and James, and Thomas. Only Bartholomew is pointing at Jesus, who is ascending to heaven, though it’s clear that the poor apostle does not see him. But take note: The fingers that point to the boy and to Jesus as he is resurrected are in effect screaming out the message that only through these special figures, like the possessed boy—or like Inghirami!—can we attain the supernatural realm. And we need to heed sophia to be able to recognize these special figures. You’re quite right—it is almost a treatise on being a medium. One in which an epileptic and the Son of God are closely intertwined. What a lesson that is!”

  I frowned. “Where is The New Apocalypse in all this, Doctor?”

  “Ah, yes. I may not have mentioned it, but The Transfiguration was the last painting that Raphael painted before his de
ath. The ‘divino,’ as he was called, was only thirty-seven when he died, and he left the painting unfinished. It had been commissioned by Giulio de’ Medici, one of the cardinals who appears with Pope Leo X in that earlier portrait we talked about, and it was to be the altarpiece at Narbonne Cathedral before Raphael’s death brought everything to a halt. In any event, his studio finished the painting. Some say that it was finished in time for it to be brought to his deathbed. Others claim that it was finished later, only in time to be displayed in front of his casket at his funeral, which took place at the Pantheon. What surprises me most is that Giulio de’ Medici ended up deciding to keep the painting in Rome, and to send it instead to the church of San Pietro in Montorio!”

  Again I was lost. “I don’t follow . . .”

  “You’ll see in a moment. In 1502, with a Spanish pope—Alexander VI—in the Vatican, a cardinal and fellow-countryman from Cáceres first revealed the manuscript of The New Apocalypse to the world. His name was Bernardino López de Carvajal, and he believed that he was destined to succeed Alexander and become the ‘Angelic Pope.’ He was responsible for the passion surrounding The New Apocalypse that spread among the elite of the time. And do you know why he chose this particular church out of all the parishes in Rome? Because it was where the Blessed Amadeo ended up in Rome. It was his church!”

  “Excuse me, young man. The museum’s about to close.”

  The voice of a museum attendant broke in on my reverie. The circle of connections that Master Fovel was building in front me suddenly required all my attention. Raphael, Blessed Amadeo, Leonardo. Paintings as a means of communicating with the spiritual world. As a repository for the safekeeping of the secrets of Christian history.

  “Did you hear me? We’re closing.”

  “Okay, okay; we’re almost finished!” I said irritably, feeling pressed.

  “Please be quick.”

  Fovel shrugged. “Tempus fugit, my young friend. It’s better this way. It seems to me that you have plenty to think about, so take your time, digest what you’ve learned, and return when you’re ready. I’ll be here.”

  “In Gallery 13?” I asked.

  Fovel broke into a broad grin. “In a sense, yes.”

  Then once again, without saying good-bye, this Master of the Prado with the French name just walked off, without a sound, and disappeared into the museum’s depths, away from any exit.

  “We’re closing now!”

  “I’m coming!”

  5

  * * *

  THE TWO BABY JESUSES

  It would take me a few days to take in everything that had happened in that fleeting visit with Fovel. That night I felt as if our second encounter had drained me of all my mental energy, leaving me so exhausted that I went straight to bed without even eating dinner or watching any TV.

  Luckily, my presentation the following morning on prophecies and the war in the Gulf went much better than I had expected.1 That one little spark of lucidity raised both my grade and my self-esteem. Unfortunately, when I tried just a little later to write down what had happened during my encounter with Fovel, or to relate it all to Marina, I found it impossible. All I could process were sensations, flashes of memory. Fleeting glimpses of images that proved difficult to make sense of. Overall I had the sense that I’d fallen into the grip of an unhealthy obsession, a kind of icon overdose that would only subside with time. I held out the hope that the Christmas holiday break would help calm things down. For ten days I could forget about the Prado and its strange Master.

  I would have had my calm were it not for a lightning trip that I had to make first to the heart of Castile—to Turégano—which came up more or less out of the blue. I was never so happy to have a car as I was in those days. In Turégano, in the shadow of that spectacular Segovian castle in which King Philip II’s all-powerful secretary, Antonio Pérez, was held prisoner, the actress Lucia Bosè had acquired an old flour mill with the intention of turning it into the world’s foremost museum of art about angels. And right there, in the middle of that old ruin, among sacks of cement, ceiling tiles, scaffolding and plans tacked up on the walls, with an old radio pumping out Christmas carols, Lucia Bosè had made an appointment with me for coffee.

  It was really my doing. Some time back, I’d been intrigued by some comments she’d made in a prominent Madrid newspaper about being an avid reader of Rudolf Steiner. My intrigue grew exponentially when Fovel brought Steiner’s name up, and right after our Tuesday encounter I called her on a whim, leaving a long message on her machine. Not expecting her to respond so quickly, I was surprised to come back to my dorm and find a note waiting for me at the front switchboard: “Venite presto. Lucia.” So of course I went.

  My hostess turned out to be the living embodiment of the illusion—Miss Italy 1947, international film star, married at one time to mythical bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, mother of Miguel Bosé, and grandmother to several artists. Lucia had agreed to meet me when she heard my name, which she actually recognized because earlier that year I’d had a notable article about angels published in one of her favorite magazines. As she told me later, “I read everything I can about angels and I memorize every detail.”

  It had been a strange piece, coming out just after an incident in February of 1990 when several youths from Paiporta in Valencia had appeared in the media with the story that they had met with actual flesh-and-blood angels who had given them a mysterious two-thousand-page book, filled with apocalyptic prophecies about the future.2

  In my article, I uncovered the existence of a second group of similar “receivers,” led by an artist, a painter. This is what had caught the actress’s attention, as she was developing her idea for a museum of angel paintings.

  I was no sooner in the door, receiving a rushed peck on each cheek and an invitation to follow her into the depths of the construction, than she asked me, “So, do you think those kids really saw actual physical angels?”

  I shrugged, a little intimidated by the question. I was soon to discover that beneath her volcanic persona there was a very kind heart.

  “Well . . .” I hesitated. “It’s their word against anyone else’s. The truth is, I don’t know.”

  “But, io si credo—I do believe it!” she blurted out, in that delicious and easy mix of Spanish and Italian.

  “So do I!” added a tanned, fortysomething man with receding hair and an intelligent look, who was waiting for us in the site’s improvised kitchen.

  “Oh, caro. This is my friend, Romano Giudicissi. Since you mentioned you were interested in talking about Rudolf Steiner and his theory about the two baby Jesuses, I asked him to join us. I hope you don’t mind, he’s quite an authority on the subject.”

  “Of course not,” I replied.

  “There’s nothing strange about believing that a flesh-and-blood angel can appear here among us,” Romano said with aplomb as he shook my hand. He smiled and motioned toward a bench for me to sit down.

  “In the Bible there’s the story about how two angels appeared before Abraham, and sat at his table and ate and were seen by the whole family. Why shouldn’t they appear now, if they want to?”

  “With any luck, Romano is one, too,” teased Lucia. “Here to drink some of my famous coffee!”

  “Certo!” he replied, smiling broadly.

  The three of us spent a good while discussing this idea: Can the invisible become physical and take on a body? The question intrigued me. From what I’d read since meeting Fovel, I also knew that this was one of Raphael’s most urgent preoccupations. And unlike Leonardo, the divino of Urbino had not renounced painting the supernatural. In fact, he believed that it should be painted with the same physicality and realism with which you would paint anything else in the material world.

  Which is exactly why the Master of the Prado had cited St. Thomas Aquinas as one of his sources of inspiration. As I was on the point of discovering for myself, this great medieval theologian had attempted to come up with scientific and rational
explanations for such questions as these. According to him, the invisible can sometimes become visible, tangible, and therefore able to be painted.

  “St. Thomas!” exclaimed Romano when he heard me mention his Summa Theologica. “Did you know that, at one point, he enthusiastically discussed the ideas of another important theologian—another stubborn Milanese like Lucia here—Pietro Lombardo, who also believed that angels had a physical existence.”

  “And did St. Thomas argue against this?” I asked.

  “Not exactly, Javier,” replied Romano. “He did reject the idea that they could have a body from nature, as it were. But he believed that if they needed to have one for a particular reason, like for example to appear before Mary to tell her of her conception, then that they had the means to create one.”

  I was fascinated. “What kind of means?”

  “In Summa Theologica he says that angels were able to form a body from condensed air. Even from clouds,” said Romano.

  For some reason the idea sounded familiar to me. Then I remembered why. Raphael had been the first modern painter who began to represent holy, sacred figures, like Jesus in all his majesty, or the Holy Spirit, or even God, without the usual glowing almond shape that medieval painters had traditionally surrounded them with. These aureoles, as they were called, had been used to show the presence of something sacred. For the faithful, they acted like a sort of traffic signal, indicating when a figure or image was of a divine nature. Raphael did away with this, and instead substituted clouds, or glowing skies. Could he have read St. Thomas?

  Romano seemed to put a lot of stock in Summa Theologica, so I made a note to consult it at the first opportunity. I soon learned that he had been modest in his praise. Conceived by Thomas—or “Doctor Angelicus,” as he was known after his death in 1274—over endless nights kneeling before an altar that was lit by a single candle, his great work was a source of infinite surprises. He dedicates a significant number of the over two million words in the work to supernatural questions, suggesting such daring theories as the following, on the occasional corporeality of angels: