The poetry

"When Santiago Rusiñol (Barcelona, 1861 - Aranjuez, 1931) returned from Pisa and Florence in 1894, the primitive Italians’ influence over the artist ended up materialising in three large panels that hang from the original lunettes at the head of the Great Hall, which were initially conceived to decorate this area in Cau Ferrat. We are referring to the well-known allegories of La Pintura, La Música and La Poesia. All three were created in Paris between 1894 and 1895 and today these three compositions are considered to be Rusiñol’s particular pictorial contribution to the Symbolist movement that was very much in vogue in Europe at the end of the century and with which, during those years, the artist felt identified.
La Poesia shows a woman –recalling the dames Petrarch and Dante used to dream of– in the middle of a twisted path that leads to somewhere unknown. The girl is wearing a laurel leaf crown and is staring upwards at an undefined point, as if she were waiting to receive a revelation which she would then leave written down using the pen in her right hand. Her dark dress contrasts with the luminosity of the surrounding landscape; in front of her there is a field of wild flowers, from which a pond and a fountain emerge, representing the mystic Fountain of the Water of Life, and which is an exact copy of the one in the Fountain Room in Cau Ferrat."