During my early years in school, I especially enjoyed my Spanish class. The grammar part wasn’t my favourite, though I loved practising reading — something that gave my imagination a big boost.

One day, when we had to read a story in one book, my eyes fell on an illustration accompanying it. It was a painting by Pablo Picasso titled Familia de Saltimbanquis (A circus-actor’s family).

The famous Picasso’s rose period painting from 1905 was a nice vignette for a children’s tale. That single illustration caught my full attention, thus I don’t remember anything about the story; it was like feeling melancholy for the first time. At the age of seven, one is very inexperienced about the different feelings that can disrupt or illuminate the human psyche.

At that time, I did not know who Picasso was. I discovered who he was shortly after and got to know the artist better later at university as I soaked up several biographies of artists like him.

It wasn’t until the new millennium, probably between 2003 and 2004, that I made a trip to Washington DC with my wife. We went to The National Gallery of Art and, to be honest, I would have never believed such an artistic bonanza had come from the economic neo-liberalism of the United States. It was an astonishing reward to enjoy the superb collection for free!

I was astounded. First, some works of Modigliani began to amaze me; a first symptom of repressed euphoria began in the pit of my stomach. Then I came across Giacometti, Degas, Matisse — more of the impressionist and modernism works — and suddenly there it was, A circus-actor’s family!

I was speechless! For almost two minutes I was alone in front of the work with no one around. It was just me there. A custodian doing his rounds passed at a distance. I was completely overcome with emotion. I sobbed; my thorax heaved with broken breath, and tears were soon streaming down. My wife came and just hugged me. She understood everything and was equally delighted at viewing the masterpiece.

Several minutes went by, I had no idea of time. I wanted to continue to enjoy the rest of the exhibition and my wife allowed me to linger there. I could enjoy those minutes in the best possible solitude. An old woman came to see the painting and on noticing my condition, we exchanged looks and she, with a beautiful and discreet smile, left me alone.

Stendhal Syndrome

These symptoms are also known as a syndrome called Stendhal, or the Syndrome of Florence. Psychiatric science broadly defines it as stress that provokes a reaction of a deep romance from the artistic pleasure evoked by a masterpiece or by the amount of beauty that overflows from a place like Florence, the cradle of Renaissance, and a city bursting with art.

A few years later I made two more trips to Washington DC and I went back to see the painting again. This time I was more relaxed but the same intensity of being in front of a ‘living picture’ remained the same. La familia de Saltimbanquis is here to remind us the plight of many families struggling to survive every day; it shows us how the circus way of life is another job threatened by contemporaneity.

In the picture, we can see it was the way that has prevailed since 1905, those family members show us the hardships of their work but with full acceptance, without complaint, with dignity, with weariness and uncertainty in a kind of nomadic way of life. That Picasso painting, in my opinion, defines that melancholic sensation about something that we lost or left behind, only to realise its existence too late.