Masterpieces from World Museums in the Hermitage: Velazquez’s Menippus and Aesop from the Prado museum
21 October - 21 December 2008

On 21 October 2008 in Hall 233 of the New Hermitage an exhibition in the Masterpieces from World Museums cycle opened. The exhibition, organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Prado museum in Madrid, presents two canvases by the great Spanish artist Velazquez (1599-1660) that are among the most celebrated masterpieces of world painting. The names of the Ancient Greek thinkers are given in inscriptions on the works.

Aesop, the famous writer of fables, lived in the 6th century B.C. An apocryphal biography of him was compiled in the 13th century. His works were first published in the late 15th century and became widely known in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. According to the legend, Aesop was a freed slave, the mercilessly witty author of moral epigrams in which he often expressed his ideas through dialogues between animals. He met a violent death as a consequence of his bold attacks on human vice. Aesop’s fables were well known in Spain; they were used for teaching Greek in schools.

The painting shows Aesop holding a book. To one side of him is a tub and cloth - an allusion to the daily work of a slave; on the other side belongings collected for a journey and a gold cup, which he was falsely accused of stealing and thrown from a cliff by the priests of Apollo at Delphi.

The philosopher Menippus lived much later than Aesop - in the 3rd century B.C. We know of his life from Diogenes Laertius and Lucian of Samosata. Like Aesop, Menippus was a freed slave. He managed to accumulate wealth and became a money-lender; then he lost his fortune and ended by hanging himself. He belonged to the philosophical school of Cynicism that rejected scholarly learning and subjected everything to harsh criticism. In the Spain of Velazquez’s day the Cynics were accused of slander. Lucian’s Dialogues that mention Menippus were as well known as Aesop’s works and were also used in schools for the teaching of Greek.

In the painting Menippus is grinning sarcastically. He is trampling the books at his feet as a sing of his rejection of scholarly learning. Next to him is a jug standing on a wheeled platform. In 17th-century iconography a jug could symbolize a woman. Its presence in the composition may be due to the fact that the ancient thinkers belonged to an ensemble with a depiction of Mars.

It is believed that Aesop, Menippus and Mars were painted for the royal hunting pavilion of Torre de la Parada that was built in 1636. The paintings were mentioned together in the earliest surviving inventories (from 1701). All three works are the same size and have a classical Greek subject. There combination in a sort of “triptych” might have a special meaning.

In Velazquez’s interpretation Mars looks very strange. He is not the formidable, young, handsome god of war that the painter’s contemporaries would have pictured, but a mature man on the threshold of old age. He is sitting on a bed, deep in thought, almost completely nude, but wearing a helmet. His weapon is discarded at his feet. The image of the god of war is clearly diminished. Some have seen this interpretation as an allusion to the god’s amorous adventures to the detriment of his primary activity - war. Others go even further in analyzing the content of the work and link it to Spain’s military defeats in the second half of the 1630s. It is possible that both meanings were intended. In the context it becomes clear why specifically Aesop and Menippus were depicted alongside Mars: the fabulist and the Cynic were noted for their bold, uncompromisingly critical utterances.

The ancient thinkers have been brought up-to-date and are presented in beggars’ clothing. They are poignantly characterized and superbly painted: Aesop in a dense painterly manner, Menippus with a soft, more flowing brush. The figures are depicted from a low viewpoint and stand out as majestic silhouettes against the neutral background. The colour scheme is reduced to a meagre, austere range of brown and olive.

The significance of the images and the skill with which Aesop and Menippus were executed have always attracted the attention of both art-lovers and artists. They were engraved by Goya; Manet was guided by them when he created his own Philosophers; they have been copied by many painters, including Ilya Repin.

The curator of the exhibition and author of the illustrated booklet is Liudmila Kagane, chief researcher of the Department of Western European Fine Art in the State Hermitage, a Doctor of Art Studies.

Menippus
1639-1640
Larger view