Mi Buhardilla...

The Dream (Le Rêve) - Henry Rousseau 1910


The Dream - Henry Rousseau (1910)



Henri Rousseau's, The Dream is a beautiful, strange, and enigmatic painting. It depicts the dream of Yadwigha, thought to be a Polish woman with whom Rousseau had a relationship years before. Naked, she reclines on a red couch. Her arm outstretched in a regal manor. She recalls the nude of art history but she's clearly moving outside that tradition. Yadwigha is depicted on a couch or sofa, which is oddly situated in the midst of a jungle surrounded by exotic plants and animals. What is Yadwigha doing in a tropical jungle, and why does she point with her left hand across the top of the sofa towards the plants and animals? A musician playing a flute stands to the right of the centre of the composition. He or she is almost hidden in the foliage. Only the instrument and the player's striped clothing are clearly visible. In his 1910 review, Apollinaire, considered one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century, wrote about this painting: “We find beauty that is indisputable. The painters, they are unanimous. They admire it, believe me, even that Louis Philippe sofa lost in the virgin forest, and they are right!”.



The Dream (detail)

  
Let's think then about sexuality and the erotic. Here we have a sexual image of a naked woman but is it erotic? 
The painting evoked feelings of fertility, pleasure and desire. The jungle is abundant with life, the plants are lush and the animals are strange and beautiful. The painting's not conventionally sexual but yes, it is erotic, gently erotic. Here we're using erotic to mean a combinational quality of things designed to arouse sexual desire. The erotic concerns the aesthetics of sexual desire and can be found in different art forms, particularly, in painting. In The Dream, the abundant, fertile vegetation, ripe fruit, the threat of animals and the suggestion of hidden depths, all of these combine to create an erotically charged, poetic appeal.



The Dream (detail)



When Rousseau exhibited the painting in 1910, the year he died, he also wrote a poem to accompany the painting to explain the jungle setting and strange juxtapositioning of objects:

Yadwigha dans un beau rêve
S'étant endormie doucement
Entendait les sons d'une musette
Dont jouait un charmeur bien pensant.
Pendant que la lune reflète
Sur les fleuves [or fleurs], les arbres verdoyants,
Les fauves serpents prêtent l'oreille
Aux airs gais de l'instrument.

(Yadwigha in a beautiful dream
Having fallen gently to sleep
Heard the sounds of a 
reed instrument

Played by a well-intentioned [snake] charmer.
As the moon reflected
On the rivers [or flowers], the verdant trees,
The wild snakes lend an ear
To the joyous tunes of the instrument)

The strange thing is that the poem speaks of a woman dreaming but in the painting, Yadwigha is actually not asleep. This is because we enter her dream directly. We see she's awake in her own dream. This puzzled Rousseau's contemporaries. He offered this explanation to the critic, Andre DuPont: “I am writing in response to your friendly letter to explain to you the reason the couch in question is where it is. The woman asleep on the couch is dreaming, she has been transported into the forest, listening to the sounds from the instrument of the enchanter. “
Thus, the woman is both having the dream, the dream we see on the canvas and is also present in the dream. She is, in fact, the author of her own dream.


The Dream (detail) 



This is also the couch that inspired the American poet Sylvia Plath to write a poem called “Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies”:

A Sestina for the Dounier

Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you
Came to be lying on this baroque couch
Upholstered in red velvet, under the eye
Of uncaged tigers and a tropical moon,
Set in intricate wilderness of green
Heart-shaped leaves, like catalpa leaves, and lillies

Of monstrous size, like no well-bred lilies
It seems teh consistent critics wanted you
To choose between your world of jungle green
And the fashionable monde of the red couch
With its prim bric-à-brac, without a moon
To turn you luminous, without the eye

Of tigers to be stilled by your dark eye
And body whiter than its frill of lilies:
They'd have had yellow silk screening the moon,
Leaves and lilies flattened to paper behind you
Or, at most, to a mille-fleurs tapestry. But the couch
Stood stubborn in it's jungle: red against green,

Red against fifty variants of green,
The couch glared out at the prosaic eye.
So Rousseau, to explain why the red couch
Persisted in the picture with the lilies,
Tigers, snakes, and the snakecharmer and you,
And birds of paradise, and the round moon,

Described how you fell dreaming at full of moon
On a red velvet couch within your green-
Tessellared boudoir. Hearing flutes, you
Dreamed yourself away in the moon's eye
To a beryl jungle, and dreamed that bright moon-lilies
Nodded their petaled heads around your couch.

And that, Rousseau told the critics, was why the couch
Accompanied you. So they nodded at the couch with the moon
And the snakecharmer's song and the gigantic lilies,
Marvelingly numbered the many shades of green.
But to a friend, in private, Rousseau confessed his eye
So possessed by the glowing red of the couch which you,

Yadwigha, pose on, that he put you on the couch
To feed his eye with red, such red! under the moon,
In the midst of all that green and those great lilies!




In this poem she takes Rousseau's critics with their prosaic eye to task for demanding an explanation as to why the naked woman sits on a couch in a forest. Yadwigha's dream is an excuse. Plath argues that it was the couch in the jungle that possessed Rousseau's imagination. Simply put, she says, he was consumed by the colour, the moon, and the lilies, Plath wrote.
But, to a friend in private, Rousseau confessed his eyes, so possessed by the glowing red of the couch which you, Yadwigha, pose on that he put you on a couch to feed his eye with red. Such red, under the moon, in the midst of all that green and those great lilies.



The Dream (detail)



The Dream raises so many questions which may have no answers:

Why is Yadwigha having such a strange dream? And what does the dream mean?
Why does she imagine herself naked?
Why does she place herself in an exotic jungle?
Why are the animals so companionable? Even the lions and serpents.
Who is the musician?
Why are dreams so important to us? 

Artists have always used their dreams and inner worlds as an inspiration for their art. At the turn of the 20th century, the period known as the fin de siècle, The Dream took on new meaning, particularly because of the influence of the ideas of Sigmund Freud and a group of emerging avant garde artists. Edvard Munch painted the dark side of the dream in his famous work of 1893, The Scream, which explores a sense of alienation and inner terror. In the early 20th century, Giorgio de Chirico, the famous Surrealist, he set his painting in strange dreamscapes that seemed to resist interpretation.
And Henri Rousseau, who had never had a painting lesson in his life, visited the tropical plants and animals of the “Jardin des Plantes” in Paris for the inspiration of his imaginary landscapes. He recreated his dreams and desires, much to the delight of his admirers, and members of the surrealist “avant garde”.

The Dream (detail)



The Dream (detail)



The topics of dreaming, sexuality, and desire were very much on everyone's lips. This was the new era of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud published his famous Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. It exerted a profound influence on the Surrealists in the 20s. Freud argued that we express our innermost desires in our art, dreams, and even in unconscious slips of the tongue. Everything we repress, he said, will return. Freud, we know, had his clients lay on how famous couch draped with a red Persian rug, so they would relax and talk more freely about their dreams and innermost desires. Perhaps, Rousseau's mysterious painting was inspired by this new turn of the century interest and desire, the couch and dreams. After all the dreamer is sitting on a red couch in an eerie, perhaps uncanny space, where the familiar is rendered unfamiliar as in The Dream.

Is The Dream perhaps a painting about Eve without Adam? Rousseau was clearly interested in the figure of Eve. In his picture entitled Eve of 1906-7, he depicted a woman that looks very much like Yadwigha and a serpent. Like Yadwigha, Eve has two long plaits or braids, she stands naked in a jungle and holds out her hand to a serpent coiled around a tree. The foliage and tree bearing fruit, oranges rather than apples, are also very similar in design and colour to those in The Dream. Here to, there is a sense of harmony in nature.


Eve - Henri Rousseau (1907)



In The Dream, Rousseau imagines the first woman, Eve, creating nature. She's located in a garden of paradise, a lush, entangled Darwinian jungle, which suggests the unconscious mind of the dreamer. There are many animals, two long sinuous snakes, an elephant almost hidden by foliage, two lions with puzzled expressions, monkeys, an exotic bird of paradise. Then there is a mysterious figure of the black musician, the piper. Is this Orpheus? In myth and legend, the musician Orpheus played such beautiful music, he tamed even the wild beasts of the jungle. Creating life, Yadwigha holds out her arm gesturing towards the jungle and its inhabitants. Her gesture reminds us of Adam's outstretched arm in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine ceiling. In Michelangelo's painting, God creates man. Here, in Rousseau's The Dream, a woman stretches out her arm and creates a tropical forest teeming with life, a Garden of Eden before the Fall. She's the original womb that gives forth life. Her naked form draws the eye but not because she's sexually objectified but rather, she's the source of creativity. There's no sense that Yadwigha is performing for a male gaze. She's an active female figure. Rousseau has not painted an idealised nude who is posing passively for a male viewer as in much traditional painting. Yadwigha is self-assured, peaceful and in harmony with life. Her body is erotic, rounded, voluptuous, but not sexualised in a gratuitous manner. Rousseau's painting is a waking dream. The woman, the tigers, the musician, all have their eyes wide open. They're active participants in Yadwigha's dream.


The dream (detail)



Why is the painting so captivating? If we look more closely, we can see the painting has a strange symmetry to its shapes and forms. At first, the jungle seems impenetrable but gradually, we make out the various shapes of the creatures hidden within its depths. The jungle itself seems to glow from within. Yadwigha and the orange snake are turned towards each other and the curve of the snake's body rhymes visually with the curve of her leg. Yadwigha's rounded breast echoes the roundness of the full moon. The musician and the lion, however, look out from the canvas facing the spectator. The hypnotic expression in the eyes of the lions suggests they, too, are under the spell of the piper. Perhaps, Rousseau intended the musician to refer to the black servant who often accompanied the female nude of classical painting. But in The Dream, the flute player is an active figure, not a servant. Again, Rousseau breaks with tradition.


The Dream (detail)



Some saw Rousseau as a primitive painter. He saw himself as a Modernist. Rousseau's paintings paid no attention to conventional ideas about photographic likeness, perspective, and depth. He created meaning through intricately designed flat planes of colour and distortions of scale. In their discussion of Rousseau's style, art historians, Caroline Launcher and William Rubin, point to his use of flattened space and an absence of the complex devices of illusionist lighting and perspective that characterise the official art of the day.
As a result, his work was ridiculed by conventional art critics. Rousseau found himself increasingly on the side of the avant garde, and mixing with avant garde artists such as Picasso. Who enthusiastically appreciated his work and understood he was also a Modernist and a forerunner of new approaches to art.

The Dream (detail)




In his focus on dreaming, Rousseau is certainly a forerunner to the Surrealist movement. Rousseau was befriended by Apollinaire, one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century, who in 1917, invented the term surrealism, meaning beyond realism. The Surrealists were fascinated by Freud's theories of sex, desire, and repression. To the surrealists, life was a mystery. Human beings imposed order and rationality where there was none. In the company of avant garde artists, Rousseau was influenced by the many new ideas inspired by the writings of Freud about the importance of sex, desire, dreaming, and the unconscious. Rousseau created an imaginary world of jungles, people and savage creatures who he envisioned in many paintings as living in harmony. Although Rousseau never left Paris, he was a regular visitor to the “Jardin des Plantes”, where he found inspiration from the vast array of exotic plants and animals. The “avant garde” were drawn to his surrealist vision, his unusual, juxtapositioning of objects and interesting dreams and desires. In discussing Rousseau, Andrea Breton, and Andre Masson, two leading surrealist artists, state of his work that beyond all the obstacles civilisation puts in the way, a mysterious second communication is still possible. Breton and Masson saw him as a repository of dreams and ancient desires.


(c) Prof. Barbara Creed, MOMA (NY)


Other painting from Henri Rousseau depicting jungle scenes:


Tropical Forest with Apes and Snake - Henri Rousseau (1910)



Apes in The Orange Grove - Henri Rousseau (1910)




Tiger Attacking a Bull (In a Tropical Forest) - Henri Rousseau (1909)





Tiger in a Tropical Storm (also Surprised!) - Henri Rousseau (1891)



The Virgin of Melun... or the Lady of Beauty: Agnès Sorel


This painting is part of a diptych by Jean Fouquet (Tours 1425-1480), probably the best painter of his time in France, his artistic style positioned halfway between the Gothic tradition and the Italian Quattrocento after his travels to Italy between 1444 and 1447, where he met Fray Angelico and the young Piero della Francesca.



The Virgin of Melun

In the Melun diptych, painted about 1450, Fouquet depicts Etienne Chevalier, treasurer and valid of King Charles VII of France, accompanied by his patron saint St. Stephen, kneeling before a Virgin seated on a throne and surrounded by angels, holding the Child in her lap. 

The Virgin is in the right panel of the diptych, that is made of wood and it measures 91 cm tall and 81 cm wide. Although initially the diptych was destined to the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun, both panels have been divided between the Koninklijk Museum at Antwerp, that holds the Virgen, and the Staatliche Museen of Berlin, where the portrait of Chevalier is kept. The panel with the Virgin is now on visit at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.




The Virgin of Melun (detail)



The work is of extraordinary beauty. The most outstanding elements are the monumentality of the figures, their compositional simplicity, range of colours and the transparency of the light.
Indeed, the composition is very simple, dominated by a symmetrical structure, based in a triangle formed by the Virgin herself. 

The art of Fouquet is solid and monumental, a geometric style that certainly reminds us of the Quattrocento. This monumentality reaffirms the beauty of this perfect Virgin, simplifying her anatomy to essential geometric forms, so evident in the case of the breasts, but also of the head or the perfect triangle that forms her waist or inversely, her neck and shoulders.




The Virgin of Melun (detail)


The colour frames the figure with a very balanced palette of only intense blue and red, which serves to isolate the sacred image, whose pearly flesh and brilliant light transform it in a shimmering and beautiful icon, similar to the examples that Fouquet had observed in the work of Piero della Francesca, where the light seems to radiate from the image.





The Virgin of Melun (detail)


To all this we must add the thoroughness in the details, typical of a miniaturist like Fouquet, which in the features of the face of the Virgin reaches a delicacy of prodigious and subtle beauty.


We cannot ignore also an evident eroticism, clear and surprising in this image which is at the same time so neat and immaculate. This perception, together with our knowledge of the identity of the model that posed for the Virgin and the ambiguous background of little red angels, confers the image a mundane character which makes it even more beautiful and attractive.




The Virgin of Melun (detail)


It was not strange at the time to show the breast of the Virgin when breastfeeding the Child, so what is unusual in this piece that makes it so disturbing to the viewer?


First, the Virgin is not nursing the Child, but is showing the bare breast to the viewer while Jesus looks to his right. The breast is not that one of a lactating mother but more a smooth adolescent breast. The figure is slender, with cinched waist. A certain sensuality is evident from the roundness of the shoulders, the neck, and the delicate skin of her body.

The dress is elegant and the figure is displayed in a quite a fashionable way, with the head half shaved and coloured lips. Art historian Johan Huizinga found it "a breath of decadent irreligiosity”. In essence, it is the portrait of a courtesan.

Who is this young, suggestive and attractive woman, whose attire contrasts so strongly with the traditional image of the Virgin Mary? In the back of the panel we find an inscription, dated 1775, certified before a notary, which reads: "The Blessed Virgin with the features of Agnès Sorel, favourite of Charles VII, King of France, died in 1450."



Agnes Sorel, as depicted in her tomb in Loches


Agnès Sorel, loved until her death by Charles VII, was born in Fromenteau, Touraine in 1422 and died in Anneville, Normandie, in 1450. Daughter of Jean Soreau and Catherine de Maignelais, she belonged to the lower nobility in France.


As a child she received a careful education and soon stood out for her intelligence and beauty. Their parents must have thought that she deserved a better future than to age in a village and marry a local farmer, so they decided to send her away, still very young, as a lady-in-waiting of Isabelle of Lorraine, Queen of Sicily, wife of René d'Anjou. 

Perhaps in the Court she could find a gentleman and enjoy a life without hardships. But Isabelle offers her such a poor remuneration that in 1433, twenty-one years old, Agnes feels prepared for bigger challenges and moves to the French Court. A year later we find her as lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Marie d'Anjou.




The Virgin of Melun (detail)




Agnes was very pretty and full of vitality, and became very popular in the Court, where soon she will be known as the beautiful Agnes. Chastellain, the chronicler at the Court of the Duke of Burgundy, writes that Agnès Sorel was a woman with such a beauty that the King fell in love as soon as he saw her.


It seems that Queen Marie, not very graceful and devoted entirely to raising their fourteen children, felt enormous sympathy for Agnes. When the flattery of the King exceeded the limits of courtesy and displayed more intimate intentions, Agnes went to seek advice from the Queen. Marie must have thought that, since she could not count on the fidelity of her husband, for whom she never felt great passion, best left in the arms of an ally than risk to found him in the bed of a possible adversary, and gave Agnes her blessing.

The role was not uncommon in her days, when kings were accustomed to visit the alcoves of the ladies of the Court, but so far, such a formalization of this kind of relation had not been seen before in the French court. As Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who would later become Pope Pius II, recounts in his memoirs referring to Agnes: "To the table, in bed, in the Council, she always had to be at his side." Agnes Sorel became the first official mistress of a French king. 




The Virgin of Melun (detail)



Charles VII, totally in love, is willing to satisfy every whim of her lover. And Agnes wants it all. In a few months she becomes the best client of the famous Jacques Coeur, international merchant and great jeweller of the King. She was also bestowed with several titles of nobility: Castellan of Loches, Lady of Beauté-sur-Marne and Countess of Penthièvre.


Agnes was original and extravagant, and soon marked the way for women's fashion at the Court. She combed her hair in dizzying pyramids, walked in robes richly embroidered and her plunging necklines were so spectacular that on one occasion a bishop complained to the King "of the openings in the front, where you can see her breasts and nipples". 

His style was so personal that it is not surprising that Fouquet, subjugated by her beauty, came to represent her in his diptych with such a daring image 




The Virgin of Melun as displayed at the Prado Museum (Madrid, Spain)


Agnès gave birth to three daughters fathered by the King. While pregnant with their fourth child, she journeyed in deep midwinter to join Charles on the campaign of 1450 in Jumièges, wanting to be with him as moral support. There, she suddenly became ill and after giving birth died on 9 February 1450 at the age of 28. 


While the cause of death was originally thought to be dysentery, scientists have now concluded that Agnès died of mercury poisoning, possibly the making of Charle’s son the future King Louis XI, who may have wanted to remove her strong influence over the King.

She was interred in the Church of St. Ours, in Loches, and her heart was buried in the beautiful Benedictine Abbey of Jumièges.




Agnes Sorel Tomb. Loches.













Miercoles Santo...Judgment and Flagellation

Cristo ante Caifas - Giotto di Bondone - 1306


And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee?

But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses?
Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.

Mark 14, 60-64, KJV




La negación de San Pedro - Nicolas Tournier - 1625


Pedro estaba sentado fuera en el patio; y se le acercó una criada, diciendo: Tú también estabas con Jesús el galileo.
Mas él negó delante de todos, diciendo: No sé lo que dices.

Saliendo él a la puerta, le vio otra, y dijo a los que estaban allí: También éste estaba con Jesús el nazareno.
Pero él negó otra vez con juramento: No conozco al hombre.

Un poco después, acercándose los que por allí estaban, dijeron a Pedro: Verdaderamente también tú eres de ellos, porque aun tu manera de hablar te descubre.
Entonces él comenzó a maldecir, y a jurar: No conozco al hombre. 

Y en seguida cantó el gallo. Entonces Pedro se acordó de las palabras de Jesús, que le había dicho: Antes que cante el gallo, me negarás tres veces. Y saliendo fuera, lloró amargamente.

Mateo 26, 69-75, RV1960



Dirk van Baburen - Kroning met de doornenkroon - 1623



Cristo de la Columna - Procesiones de Campo de Criptana




Ecce Homo - Juan de Junes - 1570



The Flagellation of Christ - Nicola Grassi - 1720



So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe. Then they said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck Him with their hands.

Pilate then went out again, and said to them, “Behold, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no fault in Him.”
Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Behold the Man!”

John 19, 1-5, NKJV




Ecce Homo - Antonio Ciseri - 1871



Ecce Homo - Tiepolo - 1747


Pero los principales sacerdotes y los ancianos persuadieron a la multitud que pidiera a Barrabás y que se diera muerte a Jesús.
Respondiendo el gobernador, les dijo: --¿A cuál de los dos queréis que os suelte?
Y ellos dijeron: --A Barrabás.

Pilato les preguntó: --¿Qué, pues, haré de Jesús, llamado el Cristo?
Todos le dijeron: --¡Sea crucificado!
El gobernador les dijo: --Pues ¿qué mal ha hecho?
Pero ellos gritaban aún más, diciendo: --¡Sea crucificado!

Viendo Pilato que nada adelantaba, sino que se hacía más alboroto, tomó agua y se lavó las manos delante del pueblo, diciendo: --Inocente soy yo de la sangre de este justo. Allá vosotros.

Y respondiendo todo el pueblo, dijo: --Su sangre sea sobre nosotros y sobre nuestros hijos.
Entonces les soltó a Barrabás, y habiendo azotado a Jesús, lo entregó para ser crucificado.

Mateo 27, 20-26 – RV 1995

  
Pilatos lavandose las manos - Luca Giordano - 1660


Pilatos te condenó
ante el pueblo soberano.
Han pasado veinte siglos,
y otros se lavan las manos.

(Saeta Popular)



La Flagelacion - Procesiones de Sevilla



The Flagellation of Christ - Rubens - 1607



Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesús Flagelado - Salamanca



The Flagellation of Christ - Willaim Maurice Bouguereau - 1880


Corre la sangre en tu divina frente.
La corona de espinas te han clavado
y en sus enhiestas púas se ha incrustado
todo el rencor y el odio de la gente.

Te proclaman por Rey solemnemente
y con cruel desdén te han coronado.
Tu cetro es una caña. Tu reinado,
la farsa de un disfraz irreverente.

De púrpura te visten.”¡Ecce Homo!”
y te escupen al rostro con desprecio
tras su burda y sacrílega encerrona.

Hay en tu santa faz humilde aplomo
y en tus verdugos ira y menosprecio
al engastar tu sien brutal corona.

--José María Zandueta Munárriz




Flagellation - Michael Pacher - 1498




Paso de La Flagelación de la Cofradía de la Vera Cruz de Salamanca



Christ at the Column - Caravaggio - 1607


Jesús que vas "ataíto"
con cordeles y desnudo,
dame un granito de fe,
para comprender el mundo.

(Saeta Popular)



Flagellation - Caravaggio - 1607




Santisimo Cristo de la Sed - Jerez de la Frontera


Link to ..... "MARTES SANTO...BETRAYAL AND ARREST"

Domingo de Ramos...Triumphal Entry


En principio, no tenía intención de añadir comentarios personales  a mis posts de Semana Santa, pero no puedo resistir la tentación de subrayar cuan entrañable es para nosotros el Domingo de Ramos y la procesión de la Pollinica.

Cuando vivíamos en Arroyo de la Miel nunca nos perdimos el corto viaje a Málaga cada mañana de Ramos, con mis hijos, entonces pequeños, para ver la procesión;  yo les explicaba que representaba la llegada de Jesús a Jerusalén y como la gente le recibió con gran alegría y celebración. No les conté, ya que la  vida ya se encarga de ello, que detrás de aparatosas bienvenidas suele haber puñaladas escondidas esperando, tal y como le aconteció al protagonista de esta historia en Jerusalén.

También es un entrañable recuerdo de mi propia niñez en Madrid, donde no íbamos a la procesión pero si a bendecir las palmas. Siempre las recordare, largas y amarillas, lisas sin bucles. Después las traíamos a casa y se colgaban en los balcones.

Esta es una semana muy emotiva, y para nosotros de mucha añoranza de nuestra tierra, los viajes al pueblo de mi mujer, Cañada Catena, para pasar las fiestas con la abuela, las procesiones que veíamos en Canal Sur, la música y las saetas, la tortilla de pescado y el bacalao con acelgas y garbanzos…tantas cosas.



Comienza la Semana Santa…



Entry into Jerusalem - Giotto di Bondone - 1306


Y los discípulos fueron, e hicieron como Jesús les mandó;
y trajeron el asna y el pollino, y pusieron sobre ellos sus mantos; y él se sentó encima.
Y la multitud, que era muy numerosa, tendía sus mantos en el camino; y otros cortaban ramas de los árboles, y las tendían en el camino y la gente que iba delante y la que iba detrás aclamaba, diciendo: !Hosanna al Hijo de David! !Bendito el que viene en el nombre del Señor! !Hosanna en las alturas!
Cuando entró él en Jerusalén, toda la ciudad se conmovió, diciendo: ¿Quién es éste?
Y la gente decía: Este es Jesús el profeta, de Nazaret de Galilea.

 -- Mateo 21, 6-11 – Reina Valera 1960




La Pollinica - Procesiones de Málaga
     

La Pollinica - Málaga 2011 - Hoy mismo!



Christs entry into Jerusalem - Benjamin Robert Haydon - 1820



Entrada en Jerusalen - Pietro Lorenzetti - 1320


On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem,
Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of    Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.
And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written,
Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt. 

-- John 12, 12-15 – King James Version



Entry of Christ to Jerusalem - Pietro Di Giovanni DAmbrogio - 1440



The Vaioforos - XIII century Icon at the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine


Cuando llegó cerca de la ciudad, al verla,lloró por ella,diciendo:
--¡Si también tú conocieras, a lo menos en este tu día, lo que es para tu paz! Pero ahora está encubierto a tus ojos.
Vendrán días sobre ti cuando tus enemigos te rodearán con cerca, te sitiarán y por todas partes te estrecharán;
te derribarán a tierra y a tus hijos dentro de ti, y no dejarán en ti piedra sobre piedra,por cuanto no conociste el tiempo de tu visitación.

Lucas 19, 41-44, Reina Valera 1995




Paso de las Palmas - Procesiones de Avila




Palmas para bendecir - Madrid







...Vedla hecha largas varas
ante aras
en los templos, recordando que el Rabí a Jerusalén

fue triunfante en un pollino.


--Miguel Hernandez













Entrada de Jesus en Jerusalen - Pedro de Orrente Jumilla - 1620



Procesión de La Borriquita - Sevilla



…Atardecía entrando en Jerusalén,
Y suspiraba también la tarde cuando moría.
El olivo y la palmera…
Y Cristo sobre el pollino.
Que Jerusalén le espera
Alfombrándole el camino
Con una Cruz de madera…

--L. Jiménez Carrión



Jesus riding into Jerusalem - Jean Hippolyte Flandrin - 1842








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