A Funeral with Honors ("Valientes exequias") 1807 - 1845

Curator: Up next is "A Funeral with Honors," also known as "Valientes exequias," a drawing crafted between 1807 and 1845, by Leonardo Alenza. It's a pen and ink sketch. Editor: What a stark image! The raw lines amplify a real sense of brutality. It feels almost like a scream frozen in time, all frenetic energy and shadowed despair. Curator: Alenza’s technical skill is undeniable. Notice the frenzied hatching that gives the scene such visceral movement. Semiotically, one can read the grotesque figures as allegorical, not just as figures from a Spanish history painting. Editor: There's a bizarre, uneasy energy that I'm picking up from the subjects who are grinning! It is deeply unsettling; as if death, violence and celebration are all mixed up. I guess Romanticism loves walking that tightrope between light and dark, doesn't it? It’s weirdly beautiful but also terrifying to face. Curator: This work, born out of the Romantic period, certainly doesn't shy away from confronting complex human experiences, using its intense figuration and stark, contrasty values. Death looms as a powerful presence, something we're compelled to witness, and maybe even judge. The whole history painting thing is in there, just like you noted, in it´s visual symbolism. Editor: It reminds us that death, as ugly and unavoidable as it is, will often get all tied up in politics and performance, or pageantry of some kind. In it’s raw lines, the work becomes almost uncomfortably reflective. Are those onlookers celebrating or just accepting their reality with forced bravado? The sketch is not only beautiful as a drawing; it is so powerful to provoke the question "why?"! Curator: Precisely. Alenza presents us with a scene where death confronts us in a raw manner, where interpretation resides solely in the beholder, a piece which haunts and invites us to look into that void with fresh, questioning eyes. Editor: Exactly, it is a visceral experience; art’s power at its finest!