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I'm spending most of my time painting these days, but during a short break today, I managed to read a few more pages of my "Spanish Portrait" exhibition catalogue. This thing is a gold mine. It seems every time I pick it up, I come across something else inspiring and right on point with my work. The most recent excerpt that rocked my world came at the end of a discussion about the developments in portraiture with respect to the royal courts from the 16th to the 18th century.
Author Javier Portus references Goya's portrait The Family of Charles IV (posted here) to emphasize "the pictures and written accounts of the Spanish and European courts with their highly significant mixture of intimacy and spectacle." (p 46)
..."...highly significant mixture of intimacy and spectacle..." Amen to that.
