Viejo desnudo al sol

Mariano Fortuny painted this in the early 1870s during a long stay in Granada, working outdoors in the strong southern light. It was made as a study: an old man sitting naked in the sun, his weathered skin and slack muscles set down with almost clinical honesty. Fortuny was the most celebrated Spanish painter of his moment, admired for glittering, expensive little scenes, and here he does the opposite and simply looks hard at an aging body. Behind it stands the old Spanish tradition of Ribera, who two centuries earlier had painted saints and beggars with the same unsparing eye. Fortuny died in 1874, only 36, a few years after finishing this.