Perhaps by reflecting all existing wavelengths, the color white has been linked to purity for a long time.
The priestesses of Egypt and Rome already dressed like this, while it is also the color in which popes have worn since the 16th century.
But white, in its apparent simplicity, also hides enigmatic stories: lead white was a pigment highly valued for its brilliance but whose toxicity could even cause death.
Now that Filomena's historical passage has left a large part of Spain dyed in white, we present you a selection of works in which white has a clearly leading role (And if your favorite color is another, you can always go through this article, we chose one work for each color of the rainbow).
Apollo of the Belvedere
The Apollo of the Belvedere.
Universal Images Group (Getty Images)
Many times we are not aware of the origin of our most established ideas, so researching them can provide us with unsuspected surprises.
One of these ideas is the one that relates the classic statues with the white color.
In the middle of the 18th century, the German theorist Johann Joachim Winckelmann was totally captivated by the whiteness of the
Apollo of the Belvedere,
and came to affirm that it was the "highest ideal of art among the works of ancient art that have been preserved to this day".
The two texts on ancient art by this historian penetrated deep, but contained some gaps.
The first of these is that the
Apollo of the Belvedere
that is exhibited in the Vatican Museums is not an original, but a Roman copy of another Greek sculpture.
And the error of appreciation that most interests us in this story is that, despite the fact that the German theorist praised its white color, the sculptures of antiquity were once polychrome with beautiful colors, as the documentary evidence and their remains have allowed us know as time goes by, as this article from the digital magazine about
Hyperallergic
art
explains
.
However, today it is very difficult for us to imagine a classic statue without the white color of marble, which we have turned into a canon of beauty for that time.
San Serapio,
by Francisco Zurbarán
San Serapio, by Francisco de Zurbarán.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (United States)
Unlike other baroque artists, Francisco Zurbarán did not need to resort to a single drop of blood to represent the suffering and pain of the friar San Serapio during his martyrdom.
It is the representation of the fourth vote of the Mercedarians: accept torture.
The work is a spectacular example of mastery in the representation of the painter's canvases and volumes, with the representation of that white habit that is undoubtedly the center of the composition and that hides from us the traces of a dreadful martyrdom: Serapio's intestines while he is alive.
And it is precisely that, his use of the color white in contrast to the dark tones typical of tenebrism, which has made many specialists remember Zurbarán for his unmatched handling of whitish tones.
Let us highlight the vision of María Zambrano, an artistic critic who understands Zurbarán's use of white as the closest to “absolute whiteness” and a means to transport us to spirituality.
The Magpie,
by Claude Monet
The magpie, by Claude Monet.
Orsay Museum (Paris)
Impressionism did not yet exist, but Monet already anticipates the ideas of the movement to which he himself would give life: to immortalize fugitive moments, built by a specific incidence of natural light, which changes from one moment to another.
And this is precisely what he does in
La Urraca,
a landscape painted in the winter between 1868 and 1869, five years before the first exhibition and the germ of the movement.
The representation of a snowy landscape in the Étretat area (Normandy), in which the light impression is constructed from different shades of white, makes the moment seem more ephemeral if possible.
Like him, other artists, such as Pisarro or Renoir, were drawn to this winter landscape and immortalized the lights and shadows of the fickle snowfall.
The luminosity and the predominance of light tones, as well as the absence of human representation, were so novel that they were rejected by the jury at the 1869 Paris Salon.
Mother,
by Joaquín Sorolla
Mother, by Joaquín Sorolla.
Sorolla Museum (Madrid)
On July 12, 1895, Elena, Joaquín Sorolla's second daughter, arrived in the world.
To commemorate his birth, he decided to paint
Mother,
one of his most enigmatic works, in which his wife Clotilde is pictured with their newborn daughter.
With the mistiness of Sorolla's impressionist brushstroke, both women seem almost engulfed by a sea of whites, which we remember was the color of purity and that, coincidence or not, he used to associate with women.
The apparent simplicity of this work actually contains an unprecedented technical mastery, in which Sorolla makes use of a few colors beyond white tones to dominate and transmit everything through light.
The 19th century saw a multitude of advances in relation to lighting: artificial light was increasingly efficient and accessible, and natural light was given greater consideration thanks to advances in construction techniques.
All of this was reflected in art.
In Sorolla's case, the treatment of light practically became an obsession.
But his distinctive mark is undoubtedly his way of treating the reflection of natural light on whitish tones, turning his works into authentic sources of light.
Nobody paints the light like Sorolla did.
Suprematism: White on White,
by Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism: White on White, by Kazimir Malevich.
Tate Modern (London)
The arrival of the 20th century brings to the artistic sphere the so-called monochrome, one of the most important and controversial currents of abstract art in which artists limit the construction of their works to a single color.
The Tate brings together some of these works made only with white tones, a clear demonstration of the infinite opportunities that the use of this color offers and the exploration of its expressive capacities.
But among the white monochrome stands out without a doubt that of Kazimir Malevich.
With
Suprematism: White on White
(1918), a work in which geometric abstraction takes a step further and loses all reference to reality, Malevich built one of the most radical works of his time.
For him, the color white was the color of infinity and aroused a feeling impossible to achieve if it was not through art without any reference to nature.
He was constructing his theory of suprematism, so called because it is "the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts."
In short, a pure art that did not need content for its significance.
This work made Malevich consider that he had already reached the limit and gave up painting for a time to devote himself to other disciplines.
I would paint again, but I would never again follow this trail.
The Snowfall or Winter
, by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
The Snowfall or Winter, by Francisco de Goya.
Prado Museum (Madrid)
When Goya painted
La Nevada or El Invierno, he
was making one of the first paintings without idealization of the cold associated with the winter season.
Made between 1786 and 1787, this work is actually one of the cartoons with the theme of the seasons made for the tapestries that were to adorn the dining room of the Princes of Asturias, the later Carlos IV and his wife María Luisa de Parma, in Madrid's Palacio del Pardo.
The sketches are preserved, which allow us to appreciate the compositional changes that the work underwent until we can see it how we do it today.
The passage of time caused the painting to lose the cold and whitish tones characteristic of snow, which have led us to include it in this article, but the excellent work of the restorers has brought them back to life.
We say goodbye with this work, one of the most shared on social networks after the white views that Filomena's passage has left us.
The Madrid capital, like other areas of Spain, shows off the remains of that historic white cloak.
It is often said that "Year of snows, year of goods", we hope that in this case the saying is fulfilled to the letter.
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