Diego Velázquez, Vulcan’s Forge, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 223 cm x 290 cm (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:04] We’re in Madrid, at the Prado. We’re looking at a Velázquez, a large painting. This is the “Vulcan Forge.” It’s been described by some art historians as a kind of burlesque, actually.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:15] Here’s Apollo. Here we can see the god of the sun and the god of poetry, with the halo on his head on the left, who’s here telling Vulcan who is forging…
Dr. Zucker: [0:24] A suit of armor.
Dr. Harris: [0:24] …armor, and is very hard at work all day. Apollo has just come to tell him that his wife, Venus, has been having an affair with Mars, the god of war.
Dr. Zucker: [0:34] Now, just look at the attitudes of those two faces. Forget about the rest of the painting for just a moment. Apollo, his back arches. His head is up. He’s rather full of himself, actually, as he has this very powerful message to almost scold Vulcan with.
[0:51] Vulcan looks horrified and dangerous. He’s holding this red-hot metal in one hand. He’s got a hammer in the other. It looks like he’s ready to just strike anything.
Dr. Harris: [1:02] Look at his body. He’s got this beautiful torso, muscles, and these ripples, and his abdomen, but his face has that kind of Carvaggio feel of he’s not…
Dr. Zucker: [1:13] Of this world.
Dr. Harris: [1:13] …ideally beautiful. He’s got this ideally beautiful body. In fact, all of the male figures have ideal bodies, as though Velazquez was looking at ancient Greek and Roman sculpture and looking at the artists of the Renaissance, maybe Michelangelo, and also looking at the art of Carvaggio.
Dr. Zucker: [1:30] The heads are different, aren’t they?
Dr. Harris: [1:31] They are.
Dr. Zucker: [1:31] They’re not so idealized…
Dr. Harris: [1:33] No.
Dr. Zucker: [1:33] as you pointed out. In fact, the heads are incredibly naturalistic.
Dr. Harris: [1:36] Yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [1:36] Even though they’re painted in a fairly loose manner.
Dr. Harris: [1:39] There’s this conflict in this painting between this realism and down-to-earthness in the figures, and what they’re doing, and their gestures, and the emotions that they convey, but also this sense that they’re standing like classical sculptures and their bodies look like classical sculptures.
Dr. Zucker: [1:55] Here’s the thing, is that I don’t think the French or the Italians would have rendered an important mythological subject with this much, almost sort of comedy involved, right?
Dr. Harris: [2:05] Yeah.
Dr. Zucker: [2:05] Look at the man who is second from the right, he looks sort of astonished, it’s really absurd. There is this direct human sense of conflict and humor that seems very debasing in some way, really not treating the classical with the honor that it’s usually accorded.
Dr. Harris: [2:23] At the same time though, this looks like an academic exercise, because we have the three male figures in the center, shown from three different points of view. The one on the left, Vulcan, shown frontal. The next one shown from behind. The third one shown in profile, and the last figure on the right shown foreshortened and coming out toward us.
Dr. Zucker: [2:42] Those first three almost like, if they were female figures, like the three Graces.
Dr. Harris: [2:46] Exactly. It looks very orderly, and composed, and balanced, and a little bit like a performance for maybe possible future patrons. Here’s Velásquez, he’s still relatively young. He’s made a trip to Rome at the urging of Rubens, and perhaps demonstrating his skill as an artist who can paint the male nude.
Dr. Zucker: [3:06] It certainly shows an artist who’s willing to reinvent, or push the boundaries [of] the ways in which stories are told.
[3:13] [music]
