Julio Romero de Torres -- Venus de la Poesía -- 1913
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Seeing a picture of a kpop idol wearing a lace veil on her head prompted me to read more about mantillas, and in doing so I came across this picture by the Cordoban artist Julio Romero de Torres.

I have never seen this particular picture in real life*, but I have been to the museum dedicated to the artist in Cordoba:

https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/museo-julio-romero-de-torres

At the time of my visit, the museum was ill lit.** The display there of a large number of the painter's canvasses, seemingly untouched by modernism, but steeped instead in the darker hues of traditionalist regionalism and conservative Catholicism, made the museum seem to me a relic of a Spain of the past, a Spain cut off from the modern and locked instead into an inward looking obscurantism. I also wondered whether the pictures were just kitsch.

Nevertheless...

*The picture is now in the collection of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao.

** I understand that the lighting and display has been renovated.
#JulioRomeroDeTorres #Spain #MuseoJulioRomeroDeTorres #Cordoba #kitsch