The exhibition reveals the hidden meaning of plants in the paintings of the Prado Museum

In Girona this year, spring also enters through the exhibition halls. The CaixaForum headquarters in the city is today, until August 23, Botany in art. Plants in the collections of the Prado Museumrecorrido por 53 works from the Madrid Art Gallery which proposes to view art history from the point of view of what never takes center stage in any case: the plant world.

Paintings, sculptures and decorative arts are organized here starting from the same impulse – the significant presence of plants, flowers and fruits – to the subray. about symbolic, narrative and political power. Legs that function as a simple decoration, these species reveal themselves as the silent protagonists of numerous religious, mythological, sentimental and landscape stories.

The exhibition organized by Fundación “la Caixa” and the Museo Nacional del Prado is the third collaboration between the two institutions at CaixaForum Girona after Los objetos blanlan (2014) Art and myth. Los dioses del Prado (2022). The project is also in dialogue with Temps de Florsa traditional flower exhibition that transforms the streets and terraces of the city every spring.

The starting point is simple: clear the main person’s view of the marqueewhere there are thistles, citrus fruits, herbs or shrubs that often seem to be desapercibidos.

The exhibition combats the so-called “plant vision”, the current tendency to ignore the nature that sustains life, and proposes the re-education of sight through painting, sculpture and woodworking.

The curatorial hypothesis claims that the artists of the past were fully aware the importance of the plant world and that for him they paid careful attention to his representation, knowing that his presence extended the feeling of the scene.

The person responsible for this original project is Eduardo Barba, gardener, landscape designer and investigator specializing in botany applied to works of art, with ongoing work on the Prado collections.

At the focus part of the direct contact with the plants and is converted to accurate reading details, symbols and connectionshalfway between the cabinet of natural history and the iconographic analysis. Beatriz Sánchez Torija from the Collection of Illustrations, Graphics and Photographs of the Prado Museum collaborated on the preparation of the museum.

The result is an itinerary that cruza art and botanical researchaesthetic sensibility and scientific knowledge, and which includes a mediation project in which flowers and plants presented a dialogue with the photographs of Paula Codoñer.

Transverse recorrido

Let’s follow the traditional chronology, next exposition work of different schools -Flamenco, Italian, French, Spanish- and genres -gardens in the countryside, passing through portraiture and decorative arts- linked by the presence of botanical species.

In some cases, the discussion focuses on marcos where plant motifs are integrated in a decisive way, as e.g. Party in the gardenby Charles-Joseph Flipart, cuyo marco rococó expands the garden designed to fill the visitor’s space with an herb that grows according to your wishes.

The itinerary opens with introductory room which functions as a visual synthesis of four thematic areas. There they present, among other things, Virgen with El Niño, San Juan and Angels (1536), by Lucas Cranach el Viejo, where the grape heralds the future sacrifice of Christ; Floral still life (1633–1666), Jan van Kessel el Viejo, as a gateway to a universe of horticulture and aesthetic pleasure; and Jan Davidsz still life. de Heem, Mesawhich thickens the sensuality of fruits, y Las Huertas (Cuenca) (1910), by Aureliano de Beruete, which uses the green tones of the vegetation as a symbol of the austere identity of the city.

Plants that tell stories

The first area is held in the narrative capacity of the plant world, on paper as the bearer of meanings associated with religion, mythology, politics or affection. In the back Infant María Antonia Fernanda de Borbón (d. 1750), de Jacopo Amigoni, clavel, who supports the youth, mentions the marital compromiserecording the symbolic density that this Mediterranean species has accumulated over the course of art history.

One Crucifixion Anonymous from the 16th century, a gordolobo of small amaryllis flowers grows next to one of the three Marys, who observes with tearful eyes; a plant placed as a cirio at funerals and known as the king’s candle or candlestick, refutes the posthumous dimension of the scene.

The second section look at the gardenunderstood as both a real space and a symbolic construction: a place of harmony, knowledge, retreat or aesthetic pleasure, from which apparently nothing bad can happen.

This range pays homage to the figure of the gardenerpresenting cases like the demiurge giving shape to the fragile universe through the creative will sought by artists. En Paisaje with card ¿san Bruno?by Herman van Swanevelt, a woman examines tulip bulbs, blueberries, and imperial crowns and selects the most suitable ones for next time, while the others are left unwrapped on a rock.

A taste for fruit

That’s where the third range comes in sensory dimension of plantsespecially those that produce edible fruit, and how artists have used textures, glosses and color ranges in the still life genre.

Like piezas A plate with a cup that contains fruits and vegetablesfrom the final XVII. century, the composition ends in the same phase, cerezas i granada, which lasts in different phases, defying natural logic build an image of abundance.

En Still life. Man with mono and fruit (1660–1670), attributed to Abraham Brueghel and Guillaume Courtois, represented very popular citrus fruits in 17th-century Europe, such as variegated black flower and corniculata flower, a sign of fascination who dwarfed these species when dynasties such as the Medici began to collect them in their gardens.

The fourth part of the museum is approaching landscape as an emotional scenariowhere forests and gardens become mere backdrops for transformation into devices capable of transmitting soul states.

En Forest with jinetes and perros (1625–1630), by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, robes line a fireplace that leads into a barely perceptible grotto, while the tranquility of the surroundings remains intact; en Forest (1640–1645), de Simon de Vlieger, another robe, saved in a storm, is transformed into a symbol of strength and resilience.

A multisensory epilogue

The journey ends with Scenes in the garden (c. 1765), Giovanni Battista Colombo, where elegant figures play, walk and stand before flowers or towards springs in a garden decorated with classical architecture and sculptures. The work follows the invitation of Commissioner Eduard Barba to Slow down your vision and wait for the details they are usually asked at the second level in both museums and gardens.

This last room is escorted sound stage created by Estudi Carles Mestre -water, songs of blueberries and petirrojos, brisa- that will absorb the contemplation of the image.

by the coast botanical photographs by Paula Codoñeracreated or reinterpreted specifically for the project, they are available alongside Prado works not as a simple didactic lesson but as part of an interpretive narrative.

Adamas, five olfactory stations with fragrances designed by the perfumer Luz Vaquero they complete the experience, combining the sense of smell with the eye to activate a more intimate relationship with the plants represented.

The combination of historical art, contemporary photography and sound and olfactory stimuli thus represents a visit that takes place in different areas without mentioning the conservation of the works, but extension of the usual interpretation languages. Y CaixaForum Girona is located in the garden for several months.