The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  At first, I found it hard to concentrate. The idea that someone had been and perhaps still was spying on me bothered me. But as I became engrossed in the pages my paranoia faded. I loved to read old texts. They worked on me the same way paintings did—after a while, they stopped being just a page or a canvas, and instead became a window onto a distant past.

  The pages had been taken from an old bimonthly magazine that turned out to be a glorious hodgepodge of material. Edited by the romantic poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer—a well-known aficionado of things like ghosts, fairies, and tortured souls—it included everything from the political to the artistic, and much in between. You might see a poem next to a short piece on the current Paris fashions or a story with an Orientalist flavor, followed just as easily by a report on the state of the city construction on Calle Hortaleza. As I would later confirm, the magazine’s life was brief; it lasted only three years.

  The pages I’d received from Mister X were from the issue dated January 15, 1872, and the first thing that caught my eye was a story reporting that, if it was to be believed, someone had gotten into the tombs in the Pantheon of the Kings at El Escorial, forced open the sarcophagus of Charles V, and determined that his body was mummified and intact, beard and all.

  I had never heard anything about the tomb of Spain’s great emperor being violated, or about the existence of actual evidence from the time relating to such a macabre event. Why did Mister X think I should see this? Where was he leading me? Or—perhaps more intriguing—was he trying to divert my attention from something else?

  There was further, more eloquent text that accompanied the drawing in the form of an open letter from one painter to another. The letter was a kind of dedication from the man who’d sketched the Charles V drawing—Martín Rico, a star pupil at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando—to the preeminent artist of the day, Mariano Fortuny. The letter was mostly a paean to Fortuny, lavish in its praise, without ever explaining why Rico was recounting the story of his mission to view Charles V’s body.

  One thing of note was that Fortuny had a close link to the Prado. He had married the daughter of Federico de Madrazo, a painter like himself and director of the museum. Was this where Mister X was pointing me? Or was it toward the gallery of nineteenth-century paintings? Or Madrazo’s collection? And to what end?

  Just to be sure, I read the document again.

  To Señor Don Mariano Fortuny:

  Dear Friend—

  In the pages of Issue #49 of La Ilustración de Madrid, which I have the pleasure of enclosing here, you will see a reproduction of a sketch of mine of the mummy of Emperor Charles V. [ . . . ] The cadaver is very well preserved, wrapped in a white sheet with a two-inch lace fringe, and is completely covered by a large expanse of red damask. The three centuries that have passed since the emperor was interred have inflicted surprisingly little damage, and no matter what you may have read or heard I can assure you that all in all it is still in almost perfect condition, the sole exception being a few drops of wax on the emperor’s chest, allowed to fall no doubt by the trembling hands of those curious souls who have been fortunate enough to view these venerated remains on the few occasions when the casket has been opened. One thing that particularly caught my attention was that the thick, close-trimmed beard is not grizzled and white as so often shown in depictions of our noble prince, but rather a rich dark brown. A golden skullcap covers most of his head, obscuring his hair, and one can discern the outline of bone in the forearms, and on the left side of the neck.

  I will not recount the emotion that I felt, the feelings that moved my very spirit upon seeing those still remains of the man who, having filled the world with his greatness, would come to take his leave of this life in the monastery in Yuste, humble and repentant, as I have promised myself not to take up too much of your precious time with this dedicatory letter that already grows too long.

  I nonetheless must inform you, and here I beg your further indulgence, that at no time have I ever encountered more difficulties, nor worked with as much trouble and discomfort as I had to in completing this drawing. I was forced throughout to maintain my posture in a perfect C shape, and the distance from my face to the model was no more than one foot, and I leave it to your good judgment to imagine the difficulty of drawing in such conditions.

  I therefore bring this letter to a close, and trust that you accept this greeting with as much indulgence as I took pleasure in the writing of it.

  Your friend,

  Martín Rico

  Escorial, December 18

  Seated there under the cold fluorescent light in the small library of my residence hall, with Volume 51 of the well-loved, black-and-gold Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana open to the entry on the letter’s author, I began to appreciate the impact of this event on Rico. A notable realist painter of the time, lauded for his mastery of nineteenth-century landscapes, and with a modest exhibit in the Prado itself,1 he had somehow won access to the tomb of Charles V and had seen with his own eyes the subject of so many portraits by the great Titian himself. It must have been a powerful experience for him. Once in a lifetime. But what did it mean?

  Something about the whole Rico story was nagging at me. Marina had said that, right after giving her the material on Rico, Mister X had talked about death in a way that made little sense to her. The more I thought about it, the way she described the whole thing made it sound staged. Like it was an act put on for her—and my—benefit.

  One thing I had learned in my studies was that in order to have the brain retain specific information, it helped to associate it with absurd facts or images. For an aspiring journalist intent on reaching his audience, this had been a revelation. For example, they taught us that if we were reporting a dockers’ strike, our report would make a much more lasting impression on the viewer if we were suspended from one of the dock cranes, rather than simply standing on the pier. When one upsets the normal, or expected pattern, the human memory is able to retain the smallest details. Was that what Mister X was doing with Marina? Was he trying to make sure that she remembered what he said, and if so, why? What for?

  Lacking any other good ideas, I decided to go to work on this hypothesis.

  The first thing I did was to isolate the basic ideas contained in Mister X’s monologue. There were two. The first was in the somewhat archaic phrase about it being of a great virtue to prepare oneself for a good death; the second, in the expression, “to go unburdened.” I wrote these down in my notebook.

  Next, guided by these ideas, I combed through the entries in the encyclopedia for Rico, Fortuny, and Bécquer, looking for something that might have a connection or give meaning to these ideas, but found nothing. However, I then pored over the extremely long entry on Emperor Charles V and quickly found something that linked the two phrases. Apparently, this now-mummified emperor had been the first ruler in his time ever to have devoted the last two and a half years of his life to preparing himself for his death—a great virtue.

  Charles V renounced all his titles and retired to a monastery in the province of Cáceres until his death. Interestingly, he did this unburdened by luggage, expressly ordering that he be buried without jewels, baubles, or any other trappings of power.

  Encouraged by this little ray of light, I went to track down Santi Jiménez, a graduate student in Geography and History who lived on my floor and who was doing his doctoral thesis on Charles V.

  Santi was the envy of all of us. For as long as anyone could remember, he’d always been among the first group of students allowed to choose rooms each semester, and he always picked the same one—a spacious corner suite on the third floor of our building, with its own vestibule, private bathroom, fridge, microwave, and great views of the pool.

  The less charitable students attributed his success with girls to a corresponding deployment of funds, rather than to his moon face, thick glasses, or his almost supernatural ability to procure whatever you might need, from a used digital camera t
o an official Real Madrid warm-up suit. Everyone went to him when they were in a jam. You had to acknowledge his knack with people and his ability to get things done. He was a born fixer, always ready with a greeting, and willing to help you with whatever it might be, even if it was late and you were an unknown freshman, though there would always be some kind of price later.

  Now it was my turn to ask him for a favor.

  “You want to know if Charles V prepared himself for his death?” he repeated, not understanding. Santi peered at me through his thick lenses, surprised by my request. “You really just want to talk about history? That’s all?”

  I’d called up to his room from the front desk, and he’d appeared, disheveled, a few minutes later, a half-empty beer in his hand. I apologized for disturbing him, and assured him that my request was purely professional and wouldn’t take long. There was nothing else I needed.

  “You’re in journalism, right?” he asked mischievously, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

  “Yeah, but right now I’m interested in the emperor’s death.”

  He smiled. “I can’t blame you there.”

  “So will you tell me?”

  “About Charles V? Sure, absolutely, man! He’s a fascinating character,” he added, as if he were talking about a member of his family. “I‘d say he’s the only ruler of his era who died knowing what he was doing.”

  Go ahead, then—tell me all about it,” I implored him.

  So the future Doctor Jiménez, still surprised by my request, went all out. We found a spot in a corner of the cafeteria by the large window overlooking the entrance to the building. We ordered coffee and donuts, and Santi began to talk.

  “When you look at the emperor’s last years, one of the first things that jumps out at you is that he abdicated all of his titles and crowns almost three full years before he died. No one had ever done anything like that before. In those days it was always assumed that a monarch or a pope would stay on his throne until the day that God chose to take him. Charles broke the pattern, almost as if he knew that his end was near.”

  “Did something happen?” I asked.

  “Yes, in fact. Not long before he renounced everything, Charles suffered a complete change of personality. He went from being an extroverted ruler who devoted his time to receiving foreign ambassadors, planning military campaigns, and managing the affairs of a family with interests in all the palaces of Europe, to one with a taciturn disposition. His fragile health at the age of fifty-four is often cited as a possible cause. He was plagued by pain from gout and hemorrhoids, and before long it seemed that all he was interested in was atoning for his sins, before it was too late.”

  “So that’s it?” I grumbled. “He abdicated because he was sick?”

  “No!” Santi was amused. “That wouldn’t have stopped the man whom Erasmus had dubbed the ‘New Caesar’! No, what happened was that just before this renunciation of his, he experienced the worst possible thing for someone accustomed only to winning—he lost!”

  Santi looked down at the table where our food had just been served, and proceeded to deliver a small history lesson. It was as if just by closing his eyes and inhaling espresso fumes, Santi could access some vast internal historical encyclopedia. I recalled that it was Charles V who had first introduced both coffee and cocoa to Europe from the Americas, and wondered if that had anything to do with it.

  According to Santi, sometime around 1554 this stubborn and cultivated warrior who’d always had boundless energy and been admired by his people, began to lose his luster. Some historians blame the disappointment of having failed to realize his plan to lead one last Crusade to the Holy Land, like the ones dreamed of by Columbus and Pope Innocent VIII.2 Still others attributed it to the declining quality of his life, or even his failures to stop the spread of Martin Luther’s new ideas, however actively he tried. Barely a day went by that Charles did not bitterly regret failing to kill Luther when he had had the chance. Whatever the reason, from around the age of fifty he began to give the impression that none of that was important to him any longer. The only thing that now preoccupied him now was how he was going to make his transition to the beyond.

  Not long before this, there had been other signs that Charles was abandoning the material world. For example, in the winter of 1548, having consolidated his supremacy over Suleiman the Magnificent as well as Pope Clement VII, who had suffered the Sack of Rome by Charles’s troops twenty years earlier, Charles’s writings began to betray his fear that the wars he’d waged had corrupted his soul. He was terrified by the idea that his sins might deny him eternal life.

  On January 18 of that year, moved to action by his deep Catholic belief, he drew up a proclamation consigning all properties to the future Philip II, whom he addressed saying, “contemplation of my past deeds has brought with it certain pains, which cause me now to appreciate the dangers of life. Now, knowing not what fate might befall me, by the grace of God, I hereby make these resolutions and resolve to take what may come to me . . .”3

  Santi impressed me greatly with his ability to reel these quotes off from memory. He paused for a moment, then continued, “Looking back with the perspective and hindsight of several centuries,” he said, “it’s easy to surmise that he was carefully planning his own end.”

  “But wasn’t it irresponsible of him to leave his throne to his son when he was still in full possession of his mental faculties?” I asked Santi.

  “Not at all! He had suffered a number of setbacks. In the winter of 1553–54, for example, this Catholic Caesar, who had used the bulk of the wealth brought back from Spain’s conquistadores in Mexico and Peru to pay for the wars against the Protestants, lost any hope of delivering Germany back to the Catholic Church. Still smarting from the humiliating defeat at Innsbruck at the hands of a Franco-German alliance, his most loyal duke of Alba managed to lose half of his armies during his failed siege of Metz.”

  “And that’s why he decided to die?” I asked, not wanting to get too deep into the details of specific battles.

  Santi rubbed his nose, becoming increasingly disconcerted by my interest. “You’d probably better come up to my room. I have something there that will explain everything.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s something that possesses a unique—even mystical—beauty, which you’d appreciate. It gives a good sense of Charles’s state of mind then. He devoted as much attention to the commissioning of this as he did to his own last testament, displaying an effort and persistence that reminds me of the amount of trouble that the Egyptian pharaohs took with the design of their tombs. Remember how they adorned the inside walls with maps of the hereafter which became known as the Pyramid Texts?”

  I cut him off, intrigued. “What kind of artifact is it?”

  “It’s a painting.”

  “Oh, my God!” I cried, “Let’s go!”

  A few moments later we were standing in his room. When I first looked at the painting I was puzzled, and then my puzzlement gave way to euphoria. I had seen it before! It hung only a few steps away from that spectacular bronze, Carlos V and the Fury by Leoni. It’s basically the first painting you see when you come into the Prado through the Goya Alta Entrance. I’d seen it dozens of times without ever really stopping to look at it, and now I was wondering how I could have been so dumb.

  Titian, The Glory (The Trinity) (1551–1554). The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  “It’s an amazing Titian,” said Santi. “Though you can’t really tell, there’s not much of his own imagination in it. He painted it according to very specific instructions that he got from the emperor. We know, for example, that Charles took such an interest in Titian’s progress with this that he would frequently have his ambassador in Rome visit Titian to make sure that he was still alive and working on the commission. The final result wasn’t ready until the end of 1554, and it’s easy to see that a great deal of thought and planning went into it. It’s too bad there’s not more about it in the history b
ooks.”

  I took my time and went over the painting thoroughly; it’s an enthralling scene. The sky opens over a mostly empty Castilian field, and we can see the Holy Trinity receiving various prophets, patriarchs, and other well-known figures from sixteenth-century Spain. Since Santi seemed to know all about the painting, I kept quiet, not even mentioning how extraordinary I found it.

  Santi continued. “The painting was quite complex, and was conceived in stages. Incredibly, none of Charles’s people could tell what he was up to until they saw the finished work, standing by his deathbed. Did you know that Charles ended up organizing his own funeral rites and then proceeded to celebrate them before his death, so that he could preside over them?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded, and proceeded to show me the text from someone who was actually there, the Jesuit Juan de Mariana, who describes how the emperor, standing with the monks who were singing the funeral service, prayed for his own eternal rest as if he had indeed already departed this life, accompanying them as much with his tears as his voice.4 According to Santi, Charles threw himself into the funereal psychodrama with such zeal that he ended up lying on the ground and passing himself off as dead.

  “This painting was part of the ceremony. Have you figured out what it shows? It’s paradise throwing itself open to receive the soul of the late emperor. It’s the depiction of a miracle.”

  My eyes must have revealed my amazement.

  “Don’t bother looking for another meaning, Javier; I know you. Charles in fact gave very specific instructions to his favorite painter, Tiziano Vecellio, to paint him wrapped up in an immaculate white shroud, his face toward the Holy Trinity he had fought so hard to protect from the Protestants. Charles was very clear about this—he wanted no crowns or regalia. He wanted to see himself alone as he faced death.”

  Unburdened by luggage, I thought, recalling Martín Rico’s spare drawing.