artscope magazine: July/August 2008 Welcome Statement: Brian Goslow, managing editor Letters to the Editor Past, Present, Future: ANISH KAPOOR ANDREW SAFTEL: How do we get there? WEDDED BLISS: The Marriage of Art and Ceremony A POLITIC, Gallery XIV El Greco To Velázquez: Art during the reign of Philip III Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008 Collector's Choice: Late 19th Century Vibrations OFF THE WALL: 2008 Annual members’ Juried exhibition Featured Artist Laurence Young An Artful Touch: An Artful Touch Gallery Everday Monuments: the Photographs of Jerome Liebling: SAM FEINSTEIN (1915-2003): A retrospective DORA ATWATER MILLIKIN: Geometry of Place Nancy Craig: New Paintings and Works on Paper, and Romolo Del Deo: New Sculpture and Bronze Furniture ALEX KATZ AND FRIENDS / THE GLEANERS BLACK WOMANHOOD: Images, Icons, And Ideologies of the African Body 215 College Street Artists' Cooperative Gallery Kevin Gilmore: Recent Paintings Paintings: Stephen Courbois, Sculpture: Pat Musick Penelope Jencks: Sculpture in Bronze, Terracotta and Plaster Theater: Counter Productions Theater: Ko FEST Music: Marblehead Summer Jazz Concerts and Festival of Arts Dance: Bates Summer Dance Festival Musings: FUNG WAH ADVENTURE Capsule Previews: May/June 2008

El Greco To Velázquez: Art during the reign of Philip III Sarah E. Fagan Museum of Fine Arts 465 Huntington Avenue Boston Through July 27 More than that of his predecessor Philip II and his successor Philip IV, the rule of Spain’s Philip III (from 1598-1621) was known for its rambunctious parties, exorbitant spending on church and state, and the creation of an Iberia abound with cultural diversity and openness. The peninsula was a place where the singular genius of El Greco could flourish and a young Diego Velázquez could gain fame even by breaking away from his master and displaying his knack for naturalism on such low-brow subjects as peasants and domestic scenes. Thus is the political and artistic world the creators of El Greco to Velázquez seek to explore, the world of a little-known king and the leaps and bounds of Spain’s artistic contributions under his rule. Represented in the exhibition (co-created by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University) are dozens of artists, contemporaries of the two title greats. Over 60 works hailing from The Prado, Scotland’s National Gallery, and various other institutions and private collections from across the globe grace the MFA’s second floor. The show is divided by subject matter, such as Portraiture, Religion and Still Lifes, and traces the development of these genres through the years of Philip III’s reign. The flow of paintings is punctuated with surprises, such as drawings, sculptures and one grand collection of natural and manmade treasures, the camarín. A camarín, or “little room,” was a wall-to-wall amassment of fineries collected by the upper class (in this case, the Duke of Lerma) meant to wow visitors in an ostentation of wealth and connoisseurship. In this exhibit, the camarín is represented by a floor to ceiling replica of the sorts of things the Duke had in his own collection, from Chinese pottery to Venetian glass to nautilus shells, informed by written inventory records. Thanks to scavenger hunt-like efforts of royal proportions by the show’s curators, the modern day camarín reflects the one possessed by the king’s favorite advisor. Spot lit in its own space, it no doubt carries the same stunning effect as the original. The last room of the exhibit is the flan at the end of the banquet; fanciful still lifes greet the visitor, featuring pheasant carcasses, ripe melons and cabbages hanging from strings. Sans religion, sans state, sans patron, works like Juan Sánchez Cotán’s “Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber” were made for little reason but their painters’ desire to explore light, shadow, composition and trompe l’oeil effects. Amongst the still lifes are early works by Velázquez, including the painfully realistic “An Old Woman Cooking Eggs,” completed before Read the entire article in our magazine pages...