Rubens' three graces are quarks

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A book invites you to contemplate the works of the Prado Museum through the eyes of science

All three graces are quarks. At least that can be seen in the representation of Rubens (from 1635) on display at the Museo del Prado: they dance very close together, held together by light gauze, each one with hair of a different color. Quarks, according to the currently accepted physical theory, the Standard Model, are the fundamental components of other particles such as the proton. They gather in threes, strongly united and can be of different colors (like the manes of the Graces). Three quarks make a proton. Thus, the three Graces can also be a proton.

The one who sees this curious scientific analogy is the mathematician and novelist José David de la Fuente, who has spent three years walking around the Museo del Prado and trying to find science within the paintings. And high-flying science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Particle Physics… Sometimes, as you can see, in a very imaginative way. “Science and art are usually taught as unconnected elements”, says De la Fuente, “I intend to build bridges between both fields”.

For example, in El Lavatorio (1547) by Tintoretto we find the Einsteinian contraction of space and in The Kidnapping of Helena (1579), by the same author, instead of a battle between Trojans and Spartans, De la Fuente sees a fight between earthlings and aliens from a quantum planet where Heisenberg uncertainty is perceived at a macroscopic level. "You have to look at those horses that unfold, in that mass of blurred bodies that unfolds in the background," says the professor. Some deer, those in the painting Hunting at Torgau Castle in honor of Ferdinand I (1545), by Lucas Cranach the Elder, produce with their movement in troubled waters something like the representation of curved space-time that Einstein develops in Theory from General Relativity: mass causes spacetime to warp and very violent events can create gravitational waves.

"Fra Angelico did not know it, but in The Annunciation, from 1426, he was advancing some of the Einsteinian concepts," says the professor. One of the key thought experiments in Einstein's conceptual development was imagining what it would be like to ride on a beam of light. “Fra Angelico represents the Holy Spirit as a dove on a ray of light”, says De la Fuente, “in addition, when traveling at the speed of light the mass of bodies is completely transformed into energy: like the Holy Spirit”. While he looks at himself, everything fits.

After retiring from his classes, the mathematician turned the museum into something like his "second home." And from his expeditions through his rooms, the book Dialogues in the Prado on science and art has emerged, published by the Department of Education, Youth and Sports of the Community of Madrid, which can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. Especially dedicated to young people (and to anyone who does not have scientific knowledge), it reproduces the genre of dialogue that leads to knowledge, following the tradition of Plato's Dialogues or Galileo's Dialogue on the two greatest systems of the world. In this case, the teacher talks with his young granddaughter.

In addition to the great theories of modern Physics, the author pays attention to the precise way of representing light and shadows that can be seen in the painting Santa Bárbara (1438) by Robert Campin, in the folds, the techniques of superimposition of figures that produces the three-dimensional image in The Descent (1443) by Van Der Weyden or in the presence of creationist ideas in The Garden of Earthly Delights (1515) by El Bosco, which also shows a grisaille with a Ptolemaic representation on the back, is that is, geocentric, of the Universe.

“There are people who may find it prosaic or strange to look for science within these works, but another of my purposes is to show that beauty is not only found in art and the Humanities”, says the author. As he exemplifies, for some mathematicians like Paul Dirac, beauty was also important when it came to finding physical equations (a beautiful equation is one that has simplicity, symmetry, etc.). “Whoever knows how to combine plastic beauty with intellectual beauty will be able to enjoy the Prado Museum much more”.

In the room of Goya's tormented Black Paintings, El perro semihundido (1823), mysterious, looks nowhere from a strange entity that inevitably swallows him. “What a beautiful and enigmatic way to represent a black hole!” De la Fuente concludes.

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