'A Personal Journey Through European Art': A Guide to 16 Must-See Paintings

José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec has a very particular way of exploring art. “When I go to a museum, I focus on just one work. I sit in front of it. I observe it. I analyze it. I listen to it. I spend about 20 minutes on this task and then I leave.”

Thanks to this unhurried approach to painting, the historian has accumulated an enviable amount of knowledge. This wisdom he now shares with the rest of humanity through a book, A Personal Journey Through European Art (Libros de Vanguardia), which is at once a travel guide, an art treatise, and a history lesson.

Editor Ana Godó, director of Libros de Vanguardia, knows Ruiz-Domènec well and has shared his knowledge in countless conversations. So it occurred to her that this knowledge could reach many more people and proposed that the historian write a book on one condition: that the text combine the experience of art with the pleasure of travel.

Ruiz-Domènec accepted the challenge, packed his bags, and headed to Italy, as was only natural. The first stop was Cortona, a "musical, Etruscan city with deep roots, part of non-Roman Italy, founded in the 14th century." Its Diocesan Museum houses an essential work for understanding the world: The Annunciation by Fra Angelico.

And from Cortona to Arezzo, “the place where perspective was invented,” Ruiz-Domènec recounted this afternoon during the book presentation on the terrace of the Cercle del Liceu, where he was accompanied by Javier Godó, Count of Godó and president editor of La Vanguardia , Màrius Carol, Mercedes Arnús, Fèlix Riera, Genara Sert and Max Vives-Fierro, among other friends.

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Friends who now have a route planned for traveling and learning this summer. A journey that continues, after the obligatory visit to the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo to experience Piero della Francesca's The Dream of Constantine , in the essential Florence.

The Uffizi Gallery is one of the world's most important art galleries and houses a large portion of Renaissance art. But true to form, Ruiz-Domènec paused in front of just one work, Eleanor of Toledo and Her Son Giovanni by Agolo Bronzino, to immerse himself in its lines, its brushstrokes, its colors, in the expressions and faces of the mother and child, but also in the story of this Salamancan who "transformed the city of Florence."

The historian's tour continues to other European countries. Ruiz-Domènec has visited 15 cities and analyzed 16 works. The latest, The Virgin of the Councilors by Lluís Dalmau, is on display at the MNAC in Barcelona, ​​which was also an unavoidable stop. It is an altarpiece from 1445 that dialogues with the rest of the paintings analyzed by the author, because "all the characters in A Personal Journey through European Art are connected to each other."