What we liked at Boca Raton Museum Spanish Baroque art exhibition
This article was written without artificial intelligence assisted technologies.
By Elena del Valle
Photos by Gary Cox*
Christ Presented to the People, an oil on panel by Spaniard Luis de Morales, was painted circa 1565.
Splendor and Passion: Baroque Spain and Its Empire, a 57-piece Spanish Baroque exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art (Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, Florida 33432, https://bocamuseum.org/) in Palm Beach County, Florida, was easy to experience in a short block of time. It was an edifying and entertaining way to pass the time away from the usual tourist attractions and crowded beaches.
One of the larger artworks (oil on canvas) depicted Maria Luisa of Orléans, Queen of Spain. It was painted in 1689 by Sebastián Muñoz of Spain.
The museum interior was spacious and light-filled and at the same time intimate. Parking was plentiful and required a small effort to find. There was signage in English and Spanish next to every painting with the painter and his biography (to the best of my recollection all painters were men) as well as the title of the artwork and medium.
This oil on canvas titled Portrait of a Little Girl caught my eye as soon as I entered the room. It was painted by Spaniard Diego Velázquez circa 1638.
Although there was a steady stream of visitors on our weekday visit and we moved several times in order to have an unobstructed view, on the whole our experience was free of wait, crowd and line. We found complimentary parking about a block away in a shady parking garage (although it was unsettling to find out after our visit that there had recently been a fire in one of the garages). There was also metered parking close to the museum entrance.
I liked the attention to detail of this Saint Michael Striking Down the Rebellious Angels, an oil on copper painting by Sebastián López de Arteaga, a Spaniard active in Mexico, circa 1650.
At Saint Sebastian by Alonso Vázquez, a Spanish painter, the viewer’s attention is drawn to the martyr’s body.
It was touted as the world premiere of Spain’s Golden Age exhibit, part of the Renaissance and Baroque collection of The Hispanic Society Museum & Library (Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets New York, New York 10032, https://hispanicsociety.org/), in promotional materials. According to Spainculture.us the exhibition is due to be displayed at two additional venues. Among the 16th and 17th century art were works by the El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and Diego Velázquez.
*Flash photography was forbidden.
