MYSTERY PAINTING OF NIETZSCHE !
Rally round, philosophers and art historians and portrait artists, especially Luca del Baldo! We have a mystery!
In the posh uphill outskirts of the seaside city of Gijón in the northern province of Asturias there’s a lovely house-museum in a big garden of sculptures and sculpted trees celebrating local painter Evaristo Valle (1873-1951).
In that museum last week I encountered a grand painting of Nietzsche entitled “El Filósofo”. How did I know the philosopher instantly (aside from the trademark moustache)? That’s because just now I’m busy writing a story set in late 19th century Turin/Torino, where Nietzsche has a walk-on part shortly before his “lunacy” begins. So I’d been looking at all the umpteen pictures of Nietzsche that I could find on the internet—and I didn’t recall ever seeing this splendid life-size portrait by Evaristo Valle, unless I’m a blind amnesiac. I’d viewed umpteen varying images of Edvard Munch‘s celebrated work of 1906 portraying Nietzsche, but of Valle’s big top-notch portrait none at all. Its date is “c. 1909” which basically means circumstances unknown.
At the Museum there isn’t exactly a catalogue or guidebook, but I did buy a different book published by the Museum itself about fashions in clothing as these relate to Valle, which contains the only available pic of the picture. (Libertad encorsetada / Freedom confined, by Gretel Piquer Vinegra.) “El Filósofo” is one of very few artistic representations of Nietzsche to show him complete and standing. Also — quite rare, this — it shows him wearing glasses. Not to mention the beret of an artist, maybe with a touch of an Asturian boina. The tiny piece missing from the painting up at top left is where a bit of the photograph removed itself spontaneously from the paper to the previous verso page, as if trying to hide itself.
Inexplicably the unique Nietzsche portrait isn’t even included in the comprehensive illustrated book of December 2009, published again by the Valle Foundation, Valle, revelado: Catálogo de la exposición (Valle revealed: Catalogue of the Exhibition). A 5-minute video shows all of that prestige catalogue turned patiently page by page, but there isn’t a glimpse of Nietzsche. Can it be that the Evaristo Valle Foundation don’t realise what a treasure they have or, stranger still, that they don’t wish the world to know? Does Nietzsche (thanks to his Nazi sister‘s posthumous Will to Power book) evoke Hitler thus embarrassingly evoking dictator Franco and his followers? I merely speculate wildly. Some things are best not spoken of.
Incidentally, here’s a portrait of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche painted by no other than Edvard Munch:
Enough said!
I can’t find any link between Valle and Nietzsche. Apparently Valle suffering massive agoraphobia now and then, confining him to his house for years. But he also got to travel, meeting Modigliani for instance. Dire financial straits gave way to successful sales. His principal paintings are listed by their titles at several web sites, but never “El Filósofo”. You seek his Nietzsche here, you seek it there.
The Carmen Thyssen Museum of Málaga has a nice long write-up of Valle’s career by art historian Francisco Javier Pérez Rojas of the University of Valencia: https://www.carmenthyssenmalaga.org/en/artista/evaristo-valle (I do wonder if the “major biography on Valle by Lafuente Ferrari” and the selfsame Lafuente Ferrari collaborating with Valle on Valle’s [auto!] biography in 1946 are one and the same thing. Be it noted that Valle was well capable of authoring an unpublished “novel” himself in 1915, Un Verano/A Summer.) The art historian’s write-up is well worth a full read, but I don’t wish to become tediously long, so let’s just note that Carmen Thyssen, of the gallery itself in Málaga, aka “Tita” Cervera, who was crowned Miss Spain in 1961, still is an art dealer and collector and socialite (now a baroness). Here she’s opening her Museum in Málaga in 2011. Tita was born just 3 days after me in 1943, and I don’t remotely compare.
Valle died in 1951. Nietzsche died on 25 August 1900. The “Philosopher” went “mad” in December 1889, and presently became incommunicado, his mind locked inside his own skull. The tale about a Nietzsche who was previously giggling with glee in the streets suddenly embracing a whipped horse as a trigger for his madness is nonsense, as are many anecdotes about him. Did early syphilis cause end-of-days brain rot? Reportedly naive Nietzsche as a student accompanied fellow students to a bordello, as a result of which he both acquired syphilis yet also somehow “remained a virgin” for the rest of his life. Yet wait, what about his much later passion for that intoxicating blue-stocking Lou Salome?
So Valle the Asturian died in 1951. He merits far more than to be downsized into a mere provincial artist. Prussian Nietzsche died at the end of 1900 after 11 years mad (or not actually mad, says another authority). Norwegian Edvard Munch produced his own widely reproduced monumental Expressionist portrait of Nietzsche looking heroically thoughtful in 1906, backed by Zarathustrian mountains. Wearing a waistcoat and long coat, powerfully posed, Nietzsche surveys the landscape from the parapet of a bridge while deep in thought. He’s not just any old man with a mighty moustache. He bestrides. He’s larger than life size, a giant. This was commissoned by a Swedish banker who admired Nietzsche’s spirit and ideas.
Nor is this the only portrait of Nietzsche that Munch painted. Evaristo Valle painted Nietzsche just the once (so we suppose!). But he made such a masterly portrait. When, where, how, and why? Why and how is it unknown? If this portrait truly is unknown… Over to you, professional philosophers, art historians, and portrait artists. The game is afoot!
