Having been made aware that the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in collaboration with the National Patrimony of Spain was exhibiting 141 works of Art pertaining to the Royal Palaces of Spain, Mia and I decided not to miss this extraordinary opportunity, and more so because the exhibition was said to focus on the Art which emerged in the Iberian Peninsula over a period of 350 years in which matrimonial and cultural ties between both Portugal and Spain can be accounted for.
I believe most people who visited it were specifically looking for the well known Caravagio's painting "Salomé with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, despite being the only work by this painter to be owned by the Spanish Patrimony.
The two Museum Galleries where the works of Art were in display were overcrowded and again particularly around paintings by well known artists such as Zurbaran, Titian, Francisco de Goya and El Greco.
From images of various palaces to religious artefacts, armoury and even a tapestry the temporary exhibition was divided into epochs but I do believe the portraits must have outnumbered any other representations. Among those I was taken by the one of Joanna of Austria (the founder of the Monastery of las Descalzas Reales), her son King Sebastião of Portugal and her niece Isabel Clara Eugénia, as well as the one of Maria Isabella of Braganza (Queen of Spain and founder of Museo del Prado), maybe because of their Portuguese origins and the role they played in the History of Spain.
As we walked back into the Museum Hall a free entrance jazz concert was going on, so we listened in for a while until we decided it was time to stroll in the Museum's gardens (which used to be "my" garden of election when Mia and Faye were toddlers) with a black and white photo exhibition in place, though neither of us figured out what it really was.
Despite the weight of Faye's absence in our lives ... we managed to revive some of the memories and even laugh as we remembered a few of them ... Long gone precious moments that will always linger on and that we will treasure forever ...
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