The Master of the Prado

by Javier Sierra

  “But of course you know that this isn’t the first time that Titian painted the emperor, right?” Santi said, oblivious to my musings. “Carlos V with a Hound, Carlos V at the Battle of Mühlberg . . . Titian was already old when he got this commission, older than the emperor! But he gave his all in order once again to paint the patron who had made him rich and admired throughout Europe, the same man who made him count palatine and a knight of the Golden Spur when he discovered his extraordinary abilities and his erudite conversation. Here—look at this.”

  Santi pointed to a group of figures on the right-hand side of the painting.

  “Here’s Charles. See him? You can tell him by his chin and long forehead. Titian painted him with his gaze fixed on Jesus. Behind him you can just make out his son and heir to the throne, the future Philip II. There’s his late wife, Isabella of Portugal, and his sister, Mary of Hungary. Some say that this is his mother, Joanna of Castile—‘Joanna the Mad.’

  “Only Charles and his family are shown wrapped in white sheets. In his regal presence we see a number of other figures, from St. Jerome, holding his Bible, to King David, and including Noah and his ark, as well as Moses with the tablets. All of them from the Old Testament. Guess what the painting is called?”

  I shrugged.

  “Come on—guess! Say something!” he pressed.

  “The End of the World?” I tried.

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Museums have their own crazy ways of naming paintings. Artists didn’t used to choose titles for their works, and if they did, the patrons wouldn’t think twice about changing them on a whim. This painting has been called, variously, The Last Judgment, The Glory, Paradise, The Trinity . . .”

  “Hold on!” I cried. “Did you say The Glory?”

  I shivered as I recalled Mister X’s words to Marina: This is a key to the glory.

  “Yes,” replied Santi. “It’s pretty obvious—heavenly glory.”

  “Right. You don’t know if Charles V ever said anything about the painting being a . . . door, or threshold, do you?”

  Santi gave me the look my friends usually shot me whenever I started talking about my “interests.” He started leafing through a bunch of papers that he had tucked into a notebook. “There’s something else I have to show you. There’s this document; where is it? Here we are! This is a text about Charles V’s death. In it, a Brother José de Sigüenza mentions Titian’s painting. He says that when the ‘caesar’ exiled himself to the Monastery of Yuste to prepare for his death, one of his first requests was to have Titian’s Glory sent to him there. Sigüenza made a point of emphasizing the emperor’s obsession with the painting. Here, let me read this to you. Shortly before he died . . .

  he called for his jewel guard, and when he was come he called for him to bring to him the portrait of his lady, the empress, upon which he gazed for a time. He then called for the canvas of the Last Judgment. To this painting he gave more of the room and took a great time in observing it, so much that Mathisio the doctor was come and warned the emperor against such long attention, that it should do him ill to suspend for such a time the soul’s force which does directly govern the working of the body. After the passage of some more time the emperor was come again to the doctor, saying, “I feel not well.” This was on the last of August, at four in the afternoon.5

  “There’s nothing in there about a door,” I objected.

  “Why do you think Charles spent so much time looking at himself on the other side? It sounds like Sigüenza’s saying that Charles went into a kind of trance looking at his Titian. I know I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to esoteric stuff, but it seems obvious that he was looking for inspiration for the journey he was about to take, and that he thought of this painting as his door to the hereafter. I think even the most skeptical person in his situation would probably make an effort to believe.”

  10

  * * *

  CHARLES AND THE LANCE OF CHRIST

  To believe?

  Perhaps Santi’s advantage was his certainty. Perhaps reason wasn’t enough to really understand a work like The Glory—maybe you also needed the certainty of faith to uncover its full meaning.

  What if I were to take that risk? What if I were to decide to believe?

  It was then, in those first days of 1991, that I came to the conclusion that in life, you had to give yourself over to providence, and it was also then that I decided to live by this idea and to take it to its ultimate conclusions.

  I wanted to believe that the master class I’d received from Santi Jiménez—so opportune and at just the right moment—had not been mere coincidence, but rather the most recent step of a plan that had begun the day I first encountered my Master of the Prado. And, as ridiculous as it might sound, I believed that this plan was designed to steer me to the secrets behind certain paintings in the Prado.

  What if I were just to give myself over to this plan and let it carry me along? What would be so wrong in following the signs I’d received from so many different and unexpected people, not just in Madrid but also in Turégano and at El Escorial? And if I did let this plan lead me, where would I end up?

  With all this pressing on my mind, I found myself standing in front of The Glory not twelve hours later.

  It was true that everything so far had led me here, to this painting. From the mysterious Mister X, with his article on Charles V and the key to the painting, to Marina mediating, and even to Santi himself. At the same time, I couldn’t help turning over in my mind the story of how the most powerful man in the world had surrendered his soul to God.

  After our conversation, Santi had lent me two fat biographies of Charles V so that I could get an idea of what the emperor’s last transit had been like. From these I learned that it was at about two in the morning on the September 21, 1558—St. Matthew’s Day—in a little stone house attached to a convent about a mile outside the tiny village of Cuacos in a region of Cáceres known as La Vera, that the great Spanish caesar took his last breath.

  This gaunt and restless man had had plenty of time to put all the affairs of state in order, but nonetheless had not dealt with his own last few possessions. The painting that had so occupied him, his library, his collection of clocks and astrolabes—even the chair that had been specially built to prop up his gout-ridden leg—these were all left forgotten at Yuste.

  The Glory lay there, dormant, until at last Charles’s son Philip II had it brought back to El Escorial along with his father’s preserved remains. It was by this accident of history that both the mummified emperor and Titian’s door to the hereafter were admitted at the same time to the illustrious final resting-place of Spain’s kings.

  I could quite easily picture the grimacing emperor, wracked by the pain in his limbs, his leg propped up on great cushions, transfixed by the image of his own likeness gazing at the Holy Trinity. Surrounded by monks from the Order of St. Jerome, the most powerful man in the world received the last rites through tears, begging the forgiveness of those present and the mercy of God, all the time recalling St. Augustine’s vision of the blessed in heaven, much like in Titian’s great canvas.

  It was with this bittersweet image in mind, balanced between pain and hope, that I arrived at the Prado.

  I fished out my student pass as fast as I could, flashed it at the door, and ran up the stairs to the first-floor gallery, to The Glory, which had now acquired a new, sublime magic. The painting was nearly twelve feet tall by eight feet wide, and I realized there was no way Charles could have had it in the little stone house where he died—it was simply too big. What made more sense was to suppose that he had prayed before the canvas at the altar of the monastery church of Yuste, directly above where he was to be first buried next to his wife.

  Contemplating the great canvas for some time, I slowly began to realize something else. This painting, which for Charles had been a comfort, a reaffirmation of faith as well as a map to the afterlife, also incorporated within its image the hope that his path as emp
eror would not end with his death. Somehow, through the intercession of the Virgin and St. John—shown back-to-back on the left of the painting—the sanction of the Trinity, and the continuation of his line, he would continue to exercise his influence over the kingdom.

  “Titian and Charles of Hapsburg! How these titans complicate things!”

  The exclamation yanked me out of my reverie. It had not come from some random tourist, but had been declared from behind me by someone I knew instantly.

  “Doctor Fovel! I . . . I didn’t expect to see you today!”

  After receiving Mister X’s warnings, the one person I had no desire to see had found me in a completely different part of the museum from where we usually met. I took a step backward.

  “Oh, no?” Fovel cocked a quizzical eyebrow as he unbuttoned his overcoat. “But I’m always here, remember?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And after all, you’ve planted yourself in front of one of my favorite paintings. You were bound to find me.”

  “Really?”

  “In fact, seeing you there in front of this painting that, sadly, is usually ignored by the vast majority of visitors, I had in mind to tell you something about the relationship between Charles V and Titian. I’m sure it would interest you.”

  “I don’t really think I’ll have the time today, Doctor.”

  As I tried to excuse myself, I looked around furtively for anyone who might have noticed our meeting. The rather spare room—Gallery 24—was almost empty. It lay on the way to other, bigger rooms, and few people stopped. Today was no exception. Even so, the thought that Mister X might be near and might see us had put my guard up. Fovel noticed.

  “What’s going on, Javier?”

  “It’s nothing . . .”

  Again I got the eyebrow.

  “No, truly; it’s nothing,” I insisted.

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  I shook my head. He smiled, pleased with himself.

  “In that case, my boy, I’ll just take up a few minutes of your time while I tell you what’s behind the first painting in the arcanon of the Prado.”

  “What is the arcanon?” I asked, mystified.

  “Ah!” he responded, a little condescendingly. “You see, that’s what I like about you, Javier. Your curiosity is always stronger than your will. Would you let me have those few minutes?”

  I let out my breath. “Yes, all right. But what is this ‘arcanon’?”

  “Well, it’s a real pity that so few people know about it. It’s really a kind of classification of certain works that the Prado has in its collection. It’s a relatively recent notion, from around the beginning of the nineteenth century, when you still had a number of wizards, astrologers, and doctors of occult philosophy scattered about the court. A small group of these spent some time secretly studying the history of these paintings to determine which of them could best serve certain supernatural ends, and which not. They referred to this as the Arcane Canon, or arcanon for short.”

  “And, Doctor, you’re saying that The Glory was the number one painting in this . . . arcanon?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Fovel made a face. “But you know—we should probably revise the list, because in fact, this was by no means the first painting with an occult side to it that Charles V commissioned from Titian. Can I show you the painting that started it all? It’s not far.”

  “Well, all right.” I agreed reluctantly. “But I can’t be too long . . .”

  The two of us walked through the next gallery, passing masterpiece after masterpiece: the twin Adam and Eve paintings of Rubens and Titian; Tintoretto’s The Foot Washing; Veronese’s magnetic Christ among the Doctors in the Temple . . . Finally Fovel paused in the entranceway to Gallery 12, which held Velázquez’s solemn royal portraits. But rather than entering the Prado’s sanctum sanctorum, he spun on his heel and we found ourselves facing . . .

  “Carlos V at the Battle of Mühlberg,” announced Fovel solemnly.

  Frankly, I was disappointed. I’d seen the painting a thousand times. It was widely credited with launching the fashion for equestrian portraits of kings and queens, and what the average person sees in it is anything but occult. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about an enormous, almost square canvas—about eleven feet by nine—showing a resolute-looking Charles V in all his glory, sitting astride a Spanish chestnut horse in full armor.1 The painting’s only purpose was as a piece of propaganda to commemorate a date of great importance to the empire: April 24, 1547, when the caesar’s forces crushed the Protestant armies at Mühlberg, near Leipzig.

  Everything about the portrait signified strength, dominance, and severity—all superficial attributes. It was just the type of painting that couldn’t have interested me less.

  “There’s a secret in this painting? For God’s sake, Doctor,” I complained, “this has to be one of the most obvious paintings in the whole place! There can’t be anything hidden in that!”

  Fovel shot me an annoyed look. “Are you quite sure? I can convince you in just one minute.”

  “One minute, then,” I said sternly, darting another fruitless glance around us. We were in a crowded part of the museum, and it was difficult to tell if anyone could be watching us.

  Titian, Carlos V at the Battle of Mühlberg (1548). The Prado Museum, Madrid.

  Oblivious to my worries, Fovel launched into his lesson. “Like all men of power throughout history, Charles V was superstitious, never mind that he was a staunch Catholic. Did you know, for example, that the emperor had an ongoing flirtation with the forbidden sciences, like astrology and alchemy? Or that he went out of his way to protect some of the notable occultists of the time, like Agrippa?I

  “And, like all powerful men, Charles used various symbols to bolster himself and to feel less alone at the top. And it’s a very short distance from the symbolic to the unorthodox.”

  “Are you saying that he used . . . talismans?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Well, it doesn’t really surprise me, but I don’t see any here.”

  “You need to look more closely. One of them is quite evident—it’s hanging from that red cord around his neck. It’s a Golden Fleece, symbol of the Order of the Golden Fleece worn by every ruler in that dynastic line, almost their only emblem of power. It symbolizes the ram’s fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts that ended up in the hands of Hercules, Spain’s mythical founder.

  “The other symbol here has a more hidden meaning but is nonetheless one of the principal elements of the painting, and carries enormous force—the lance.”

  “In what way?”

  “The one weapon that the emperor is holding has its own name. It symbolizes this royal dynasty’s most powerful relic, the Heilige Lanze, or Spear of Longinus—the Holy Lance itself. A more likely choice for the emperor would have been a scepter, or perhaps a sword, but Titian opted for a lance. The lance.”

  I shook my head. I knew enough about the Spear of Longinus to be amazed at this revelation. Napoleon had coveted it. Hitler was obsessed with it and actually had it in his possession at the beginning of the Second World War. As far as I knew, since the time of Charlemagne it had been considered the one talisman of power without equal, capable of bestowing on whoever possessed it the power to determine the very destiny of the world.

  There was just one thing. The lance that I knew about lived in an armored glass case in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, and consisted of a blade of metal split in two to form a double edge almost two feet long. The blades were fastened on either side of an iron nail. The lance in the painting facing us bore no resemblance to that whatsoever.

  Fovel noticed my confusion and, as if he’d read my mind, leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “Obviously Titian painted the Spear of Longinus without ever having seen it. For which we can forgive him. At the time Titian painted this portrait, the lance, being a sacred relic, was safely in Nuremberg. I can assure you that the lance in the portrait is intended to symboliz
e that mythical spear.”

  I stood there speechless. Fovel went on.

  “Think of the symbolism here, Javier. Charles V is holding in his hands the weapon that pierced Christ’s side when he was on the cross! This is a sacred object that has inspired every single Christian monarch in Europe. At the same time, it’s not all that surprising to see it in his hands. He would have inherited it when he acceded to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. It was undoubtedly the dynasty’s most precious possession. Are you familiar with its story?”

  I nodded. I was aware that the sword got its name from the soldier who thrust it into Christ’s side and caused blood and water to flow from him, as was described by John the Evangelist.2

  According to what I knew of the story, Longinus returned to Calvary on Good Friday to hasten the deaths of the three condemned men in the traditional way, by breaking their legs. The two thieves who had been crucified with Jesus, Gestas and Dismas, were still writhing in agony, and the soldiers with Longinus broke their legs to speed up death by asphyxiation. But as they approached Jesus, Longinus went ahead of his men and did something extraordinary—he stabbed the point of his spear into the side of the last condemned man—Jesus—to see if he was still alive. There was no response, Jesus’s head hung down and his body was completely immobile. That is why they decided not to break his legs, thus fulfilling Isaiah’s ancient prophecy that not a single bone of the Messiah’s body would be broken.

  After that point, the story began to take on numerous magical elements. Some chroniclers claimed that on cleaving that sacred flesh with his weapon, Longinus was cured of a long-time eye ailment and converted. Others said that Longinus was not carrying the usual pilumII that day, but rather the votive lance of Herod Antipas. As a symbol of power, it had been lent to him to enable him to clear a path through the crowds of Jews surrounding the place of execution. This lance had been forged by the Hebrew prophet, Phineas, who imbued it with supernatural powers, and had been carried by Joshua in the Battle of Jericho, when the city’s walls were destroyed, and also by the kings David and Saul. On touching Jesus’s body the lance absorbed even more mystical powers and became invincible.