On Carrer Abades, in a walled building, and with a common garden to another one rehabilitated at Casa dels Pinelo, which would be home to the Royal Sevillian Academy of Fine Letters and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel of Hungary, beats since 1976 the heart of the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Seville (Ramse), a medical institution that, away from the media spotlight, has managed to fulfill, just now, the 323 years. There is no other older one in all of Europe. Not all over the world either.
The Sevillian institution, which today is chaired by the cardiovascular surgeon Carlos A. Infantes Alcónit was created on May 25, 1700, the year in which King Charles II, the last of the Austrians, approved the first Ordinances, through the Royal Charter of the Council of Castile, which gave rise to the Royal Society of Medicine and other Sciences of Seville. “She is the first in the world with this title to make an express and prominent reference to Medicine, without ceasing to link her study to other areas of scientific knowledge,” says the historical note on the organ’s official website. With the creation in 1830 of the Royal District Academies, it was agreed to change this old name to the Royal Academy of Medicine and Surgery of Seville. And so it continues more than three centuries later.
For its assembly hall, called Ramon i Cajal, where the portraits of all the kings and queens of Spain from Charles II to the present day were placed, artistically arranged, the voices of several of the best representatives have resonated of Medicine practiced in Seville in the 20th century and what we have in the 21st. Dr. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, pharmacist, teacher, poet, politician and high-ranking Spanish international official, who was director general of Unesco between 1987 and 1999, was chosen for the opening ceremony of this building on the occasion of reception as Honorary Academician, appointment reserved for a select group of names, which includes the Nobel Prizes in Medicine Alexander Fleming and Severo Ochoa; or professors Gregorio Marañón and Jiménez Díaz, among others.
Historical brushstrokes that the doctor was responsible for remembering yesterday Jorge Domínguez-Rodiño Sánchez-Laulhé, Academician of Número de la Ramse, at the event with which Academy Day was celebrated at the previously described headquarters, and which was attended by the Vice-Minister for Health, Miguel Ángel Guzmán, and several dozen of more people who did the absolute plenum in such a famous enclave. Domínguez-Rodiño was also in charge of presenting the strong dish of such a historic celebration: the conference given by the portraitist from Gádiz Hernán Cortés Morenoguest of honor for the ephemeris and Academician of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando de Madrid.
“A Wood Lecturer”, praised Domínguez-Rodiño. “Regarded as his greatest exponent in the difficult art of portraiture,” added the academic, before spinning an emotional presentation. Today, Hernán Cortés is responsible for the reorganization of the museum of this National Academy. “A very unknown museum that I assure you can perfectly compete with ours in Seville, being able to stand out as the second art gallery in Spain, as I recently had the opportunity to verify, at the hands of Hernán Cortés himself, who kindly “he taught it”, pointed out the academic.
Domínguez-Rodiño began his speech justifying the “dare” of a “modest physician” to present “such an important painter”. Commission he said he received from the lecturer’s brother and friend, the surgeon Antonio Cortés Moreno. He emulated to explain it to the illustrious Gregorio Maranon and he said “ladies and gentlemen, the world, big and small, is governed by invisible reasons.” He then spoke of family ties.
“And among these reasons that are not allowed to be seen, there are two that are the ones I have to meet today in this tribune. One, that the father of Hernán Cortés, Dr. Antonio Cortés Sabariego, and my , Dr. Eloy Domínguez-Rodiño and Domínguez-Adame, were great friends, both united by their love of culture,” he indicated, before recalling their meetings at home and also at this Academy. “Always with a huge and captivating smile,” he pointed out. “And the second reason is that it unites me too a great friendship with Hernán’s brother, with Dr. Antonio Cortés Moreno, brilliant orthopedic surgeon, with whom I share the pride of being both disciples of Dr. Manuel Rull González, our teacher, who taught us so much about our specialty, being Antonio who asked me to make this presentation,” he added.
The choice of the portraitist Hernán Cortés for the historic anniversary at the Academy of Medicine and Surgery in Seville is no coincidence. Like his father and brother, the painter was going to be a doctorbut it was his mother, a frustrated painter, who instilled in him a love of painting, giving him his first brushes when he was just six years old, Domínguez-Rodiño said.
The hecatomb of not following in the footsteps of his father, a pediatrician, he solved it Dámaso Alonso, a friend of his father’s, who interceded in his favor, implying “that you could make a better living being a good painter than a mediocre doctor”, as Domínguez-Rodiño recalled yesterday, eliciting timid laughter from the attendees. It was precisely the famous poet of the generation of 27 who opened the doors to his profession as a portraitist. A portrait of him in the early 1980s was his introduction to making the leap to large commissioned portraits.
In this succession of praises for the person of Hernán Cortés, Domínguez-Rodiño praised the portrait and the difficulty of getting it right, especially when the person represented is deceased. “That’s why the notoriety achieved by Hernán Cortés is so relevant, because he does something that is very difficult, and he does it very well,” he said of the guest speaker, and was moved to explain it with personal experience.
“Hernán Cortés explained in an interview about the great responsibility of the painter when the portrait is commissioned by the family of a deceased person. According to him, if you get it right, that moment when the mother meets the portrait of her son is moving. she is like seeing him again. And it is true that this is, I know because I have experienced it in my family,” he emphasized. “This happened when my grandfather he received, as a gift from some clients, a portrait of my uncle Francesc, who had died young, and which they commissioned from Miquel Ángel del Pi. The words of don Eloy, president of this Royal Academy from 1945 to 1951, were: I thought I wouldn’t see you again Curro… and this afternoon I saw you again. O wonderful brushes of Michelangelo, how they knew how to give you life! Seeing you this afternoon, we thought you would come out talking,” he recounted excitedly.
After a round of applause, Hernán Cortés began his long-awaited speech by talking about the portrait, his work that best defines him. But also from his hometown, Cádizand of her father. How this, “a pediatrician of venerable appearance, and very given to cross a few words with anyone who approached him”, taught him to discover “its corners and the greatness of its bay”which would later influence his pictorial work so much, he said, before mentioning that, also from his progenitor, he inherited the passion for culture. “For him it was a foundation of his profession and his life,” he emphasized.
That’s when he talked about his brother, “a renowned doctor here in Seville”, he wanted to emphasize. “When we grew up, my brother Antonio and I went to be doctors. Antonio followed the paternal tradition but I understood, since I had a brush in my hand as a child, that my vocation was that of a painter. For those years , at the beginning of the seventies, a test was mandatory to enter the Faculty of Medicine in Cádiz. I passed that exam and started the first year, but the passion for painting was already irrepressible,” argued Hernán Cortés yesterday before the attentive gaze of a devoted crowd. Then, he linked the two arts. “Even though fate laid before me a very different path through painting and portraiture, you will see that, at least in my experience, they are not antagonistic activities, since they have curious points of contact,” he said, dedicating a few lines to value of anatomy to the composition of a portrait.
“I must add that my father understood the inevitability of my decision when I left medical studies to enter the School of Fine Arts in Seville,” he pointed out before delving into the guts of his conference titled The experience of the portrait today.
Hernán Cortés has been labeled as the portrait artist of the institutions, of the powerful, and the truth is that there is no politician, intellectual or figure in finance and high society who has resisted him; even most of the members of the Royal Family have put for him. In 2009 he created the great polyptych of the seven fathers of the Constitution that presides over the Constitutional Chamber of the Congress of Deputies. Before getting there, in the beginning, his family was his inspiration.
“Since I started painting, I let myself get caught up in portraiture. I liked to draw my parents and siblings, in unsuspecting poses, trying to solve the main challenge that I posed: the likeness. It is not just about capturing particular features, but about answering this challenge and looking for the essential features of the model. Soon after, when I started to draw in the Fine Arts workshops with naked body, I felt that representing the naked human body was a challenge that attracted me deeply. An artistic experience of the first order,” he detailed, before giving one master lesson of the portrait “A particular review from personal experience,” he said.
He also dedicated words to the technique, which he supported with one exhibition of images after the stage and with clarifications to the attendees. He said that “it is about conceiving a work based on a person, with the physical features, attributes and presence in the space, since their peculiar way of entering the scene tells us a lot about a subject “. “Capturing it is, in my opinion, another important task of the painter”, he argued and rejected the mistaken idea “that the practice of portraiture leads the painter to a situation of less artistic freedom than dedication to other plastic disciplines” .
He defended the freedom of the portraitist from creativity. “It is becoming less and less likely that when institutions or individuals commission a work, they try to impose conventional solutions instead of more daring ones, but if this were the case, if the painter defends his artistic independence and strives in the research of the pictorial quality, the resistance disappears.” And he pointed out about this: “For example, the portraits of the dead Queen Elizabeth of England that achieved the most notoriety, even for specialized critics, are those that represented her in an ungracious, even caricature way”. “We see how little by little the roles are reversed and from the submission of the painter to the model, we pass to the submission of the model to the painter”, he summarized in this historical review of the technique from its beginnings to the present day.
And he concluded by recalling a paragraph that Fernando Savater wrote in the catalog of one of his exhibitions: “As universality expands (in social demands and in disasters, in demonstrations of power and in demonstrations of miseries) the interest in individuality becomes more and more irresistible. Also more necessary. Secretly convinced that our name is Nobody, like Odysseus’s, we demand to be treated as people. It is a display of idiocy, if you will: that is, a lament of individuality”. He read and applause filled the hall.
At the end of such a celebrated speech, the Statuette of Academician with Emeritus Number of the Ramse a gift Ignacio Gómez de Terreros, member of the Academy since 1971 and Academician of Number since 2008, in the position of social paediatrics; i give Joaquín Núñez Fústerin the corporation since 1976 and as Academician of Number since 2013, in the Place of Medical Archives and Library Science.
The solemn act ended with the thanks to those present from the president of the Academy Carlos A. Infantes Alcón. Prior to a long and loud applause.
