The alchemist gnomes
1912.Not on display
The artist sent this painting (along with several others) to the 1924 National Fine Arts Exhibition, where he won the Medal of Honour. He also sent a cartouche in which four verses were written as in a monorhyme quatrain Alexandrian stanza, by Menéndez Pidal himself, who had written poems as a hobby when he was young and whose brother Juan had published poetry books. Those verses read: ‘Despicable and shrunk men both in body and soul, / who never grow weary in producing gold / and tis by greed that they are immured in gaol by their own / maleficent vermin provided and enclosed’. Supposedly they tried to convince him not to include this cartouche in the exhibition, as they feared that it could be read as an allusion to economic power. It is possible that it could be regarded as a thoughtless yet inappropriate reference to the coal mines in the Mieres Factory, which had suffered from several strikes and whose director was Pedro Pidal, Marquess of Villaviciosa. Surely the artist did not have critical intentions, since apart from being conservative and related to Villaviciosa (his second cousin), he painted portraits for the Guilhou Family, the owners of the factory who had become his relatives.
Conversely, the work seems to be a criticism of materialism through a sort of fantasy, which is linked to another painting of his depicting a scene from Perrault’s tale Little Red Riding Hood (private collection in Oviedo). In this sense, the contrast between the strict realism in the description of the den and the expressions of the alleged gnomes – who are in fact dwarves – is eloquent, as well as the unreal character of what is depicted: one of them is drawing geometric figures, and another reads from a book before the fire of a crucible that is being stoked by a third, in the shadows. On the left, next to some rough stairs, another fire burns under a metal pot. The owl is a symbol (here an ironic one) of wisdom, but also of night, fatuousness and hell. Menéndez Pidal was acquainted with depictions of dwarves, not unusual in Baroque painting in Madrid, since not only did he copy Velázquez’s work, but he also painted a work such as The buffoon’s mirror. In this case, the colour palette – with more muted hues than ever – does not enhance the painting. The artist makes a usual effort in studying the light, which, in this canvas, is entirely artificial. The composition, rather picturesque, seems to be completely out of time.
Barón, Javier, Luis Menéndez Pidal en el Prado. Boletín del Museo del Prado, Madrid, Museo del Prado, 2004, p.76-77
