{"id":1770,"date":"2017-05-30T12:20:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T11:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2017-05-30T12:20:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T11:20:44","slug":"inclusive-love-at-the-thyssen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/2017\/05\/30\/inclusive-love-at-the-thyssen\/","title":{"rendered":"Inclusive Love at the Thyssen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Death of Hyacinthus<\/em>, c. 1752 \u2013 1753. Giambattista Tiepolo. \u00a9 Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid<\/p><\/div>\n

In a month\u2019s time the city centre will probably be bursting at the seams\u2026 the seams of the rainbow flag, a symbol of the LGBT community. Roughly three million visitors are expected to arrive in Madrid to celebrate WorldPride<\/strong><\/a>, a huge party that draws massive crowds demanding the right to love without labels. Further to its commitment to diversity, from today on the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0now offers\u00a0<\/a>an audio guide in Spanish and English that takes visitors on a queer-themed tour of its collection<\/a>. You can pick the audio guide up at the same time as you purchase tickets for the museum, for just four extra euros.<\/p>\n

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Since\u00a0Oscar Wilde<\/strong>\u00a0turned the naked figure of Saint Sebastian into one of the most popular gay icons ever, any LGBT visit to a museum always includes the saint, who was martyred for refusing to renounce Christianity. The Thyssen-Bornemisza\u2019s collection features several examples, but the one sculpted by Bernini<\/strong> at just 17 years of age is undoubtedly the most exquisite. The figure\u2019s look of tranquillity, as if he had exchanged pain for pleasure, and the way his pose gives the impression of movement, as if at any moment he will collapse at the observer\u2019s feet, make the piece an absolute must-see. In the same hall you\u2019ll find two other works that feature on the tour: Saint Catherine of Alexandria\u00a0<\/em>by\u00a0Caravaggio<\/strong>, an artist who was accused of engaging in homosexual acts, and Lot and His Daughters<\/em>, a piece from the studio of\u00a0Orazio Gentileschi<\/strong> that shows the city of Sodom, condemned by God for the lustful nature of its inhabitants, burning in the distance. A quick tour of the museum reveals the homophobia that prevailed in our culture for centuries. For this reason, the courage behind the painting The Death of Hyacinthus<\/em> is surprising. It was created by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo<\/strong> for Count Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst von Schaumburg-Lippe as a tribute to his lover, a Spanish musician who had been with him in Venice and had recently passed away. It is said that the two used to play tennis, a sport that first emerged in the late 18th century, which is why a racket is pictured in the lower right-hand corner. In his Metamorphosis<\/em>, Ovid relates how Hyacinth died upon being accidentally struck by a discus thrown by Apollo<\/strong>, who was madly in love with him.<\/p>\n

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Saint Sebastian,<\/em> c. 1617. Bernini. (Property of Georg Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza). Lot and His Daughters<\/em>, c.1621-1623. Studio of Orazio Gentileschi. \u00a9 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.<\/p><\/div>\n

The arrival of modernity, however, also brought the acceptance of new forms of love. Polish pianist Misia Godebska<\/strong>\u00a0had various husbands, including Spanish painter Josep<\/strong>\u00a0Mar\u00eda-Sert<\/strong>, who fell in love with sculptor Isabelle Roussadana Mdivani <\/strong>just a few years after the marriage. Misia, however, held such an open view towards relationships that she decided to accept a civilised m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois<\/em>. The portrait that Pierre Bonnard<\/strong>\u00a0did of her is displayed in the halls that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum devotes to Post-Impressionist painting, very close to a drawing by Kees van Dongen<\/strong>\u00a0dedicated to Kiki of Montparnasse<\/strong>, the legendary androgynous 1920s Parisian model, and another by Pablo Picasso<\/strong>\u00a0that belonged to writer Gertrude Stein<\/strong>. In those years Stein lived in Paris with her girlfriend, Alice B. Toklas<\/strong>, who was known in avant-garde circles for her extraordinary culinary skills.<\/p>\n

In the final halls of the museum, homosexual relationships become much more explicit. In addition to the portrait that Francis Bacon<\/strong>\u00a0painted of his lover, the dangerous George Dyer \u2013 and I say \u201cdangerous\u201d because according to legend Francis met George one night when the latter broke into the former\u2019s house to rob him \u2013, of particular note is A Visit to London (Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan)<\/em>, a work by\u00a0Ronald B. Kitaj<\/strong>\u00a0that depicts two poets devoted to individual freedoms.\u00a0Robert Duncan<\/strong>\u00a0wrote an important essay advocating homosexual rights in 1944, decades before the first manifestations were sparked by the Stonewall riots<\/strong>\u00a0of 1969, which were the origin of the WorldPride that we are set to host in June.<\/p>\n

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A Visit to London, 1977 \u00a9 R.B. Kitaj, courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York. George Dyer, 1968. \u00a9 The Estate of Francis Bacon, VEGAP, Madrid. In Memoriam of Cecchino Bracci, 1962 \u00a9 David Hockney.<\/p><\/div>\n

The last stop on the tour is a painting by David Hockney, an openly gay painter who left England in search of somewhere more tolerant of his sexual orientation, as homosexuality was considered a crime in the United Kingdom until 1967. The work in question is\u00a0In Memoriam of Cecchino Bracci<\/em>, dedicated to the handsome young man for whom Michelangelo<\/strong> penned the following epitaph, which is printed on this last canvas on the tour: \u201cIf, buried here, those beautiful eyes are closed \/ Forever. This is now my requiem: \/ They were alive and no one noticed them. \/ Now everybody weeps them dead and lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

This audio guide offered to us by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Spanish and English not only reclaims the memory of diverse forms of love, but it is also an extraordinary exercise in scholarship; a wonderful way to view the museum\u2019s permanent collection from an LGBT perspective.<\/p>\n

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The Dream, c. 1905. Auguste Rodin. \u00a9 Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on deposit at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a month\u2019s time the city centre will probably be bursting at the seams\u2026 the seams of the rainbow flag, a symbol of the LGBT community. Roughly three million visitors are expected to arrive in Madrid to celebrate WorldPride, a huge party that draws massive crowds demanding the right to love without labels. Further to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,7],"tags":[37,42,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1777,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/1777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.esmadrid.com\/blog\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}