Poema de Córdoba

Poema de Córdoba is a seven-panel polyptych in oil on canvas, painted by Julio Romero de Torres in 1913. It works as an allegory of the city, built around figures from its history: in each panel a woman stands in the foreground, wrapped in a shawl, a mantilla or a bullfighter's outfit, and behind her opens an imaginary landscape with monuments and streets that viewers can recognise as Córdoban. From left to right the panels read as Córdoba the warrior, the baroque, the Jewish, the Christian, the Roman, the religious and the bullfighting city, each tied to a figure: the Gran Capitán, Góngora, Maimonides, Saint Raphael, Seneca, Saint Pelagius and Lagartijo. The central panel, dedicated to Saint Raphael, is the largest and anchors the whole arrangement. A preparatory sketch held in Málaga suggests the painter first considered Almanzor for the Muslim city, though he probably changed his mind around the four-hundredth anniversary of the Gran Capitán. The work was shown at the 1915 National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid and is now kept in the museum devoted to the painter in Córdoba.

Painter

Julio Romero de Torres

Date

1913

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

88 × 514 cm

Museum

Museo Julio Romero de Torres, Córdoba

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