The Prado Museum Ages to the Present
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1 Guernica. 1936. Pablo Picasso © Sucesión Pablo Picasso. VEGAP, Madrid, 2017 Art in Madrid In addition to being the city where Goya and Velázquez linked to the Spanish Crown which are now managed also several other museums in Madrid which are less – both court painters to the Spanish monarchs – by Patrimonio Nacional, the National Heritage well-known, such as the Cerralbo and Sorolla, and the worked, Madrid also boasts an important cultural Institution. The city of Madrid is home to the royal museums of Romanticism, the Americas, Anthropology heritage encompassing most European styles. This monasteries of Las Descalzas and La Encarnación as and Decorative Arts. To the list we can add the Lázaro guide provides a basic introduction to the city’s main well as El Pardo Palace and the Royal Palace, and the Galdiano Foundation, which inherited its holdings from museums, covering the most frequent thematic greater region of Madrid is home to Aranjuez Palace a private collector who gave the foundation its name. elements of Western art. The high point of this and the Monastery of El Escorial, whose collections For its part, the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine itinerary is of course the Art Walk (Paseo del Arte), boast particularly fine examples of the sumptuary Arts is a unique institution, which, besides promoting roughly one and a half kilometres of green spaces arts, furniture and painting. Meanwhile, although its the study, dissemination and safeguarding of art, also housing three of the world’s top galleries – the Prado, collections harbour more than just works of art, the boasts one of the most interesting museums you can Thyssen-Bornemisza, and Reina Sofía museums – National Archaeological Museum reveals the various visit in the city. It would take a lifetime to become offering a complete overview of art from the Middle ways of life and the customs of civilisations that have intimately acquainted with all of the museums in Cover photo: Las Meninas exhibition hall in the Prado Museum Ages to the present. Art lovers also won’t want to miss passed through the Iberian Peninsula or have shaped Madrid, the world’s great art gallery, which invites us to © Paolo Giocoso the Royal Sites, the group of buildings and gardens the idiosyncrasies of the Mediterranean. There are marvel at many of the finest masterpieces of all time. 3 The Prado Museum Art historian Jonathan Brown has said that “few would dare doubt that the Prado is the most important museum in the world for European painting”. There is no question that it boasts the largest Spanish art collection and that its halls house an astonishing and seemingly endless succession of masterpieces by Raphael, El Greco and Rubens. Monarchs and Emperors Classical Myths A large portion of the Prado Muse- For centuries Greco-Roman 5 1. Las Meninas. 1656. (Close-up) um’s holdings originate from the mythology was the perfect Diego Velázquez. painting collections of Spain’s mon- excuse for artists to depict nude 2. Prado Museum archs. Court portraits thus abound. figures. Tales of gods and heroes 3. The Bacchanal of the Andrians. 1523 - 1526 Standout pieces include Titian’s made it possible to paint scenes Titian The Emperor Charles V at Mühl- that would otherwise have 4. The Three Graces. 1635 berg and the portraits painted by been precluded by morality and Rubens Anthonis Mor, Sánchez Coello and decorum. There is no question 5. The Washing of the Feet (aka Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples). 1548 - 1549 Sofonisba Anguissola for Philip II of the eroticism of Titian’s Tintoretto and his family. The museum’s two “poems” – as they were called at 6. The Holy Trinity. 1577 - 1579 most iconic paintings, however, are the time – such as The Bacchanal El Greco Las Meninas by Velázquez – a scene of the Andrians, or of many of 7. The 3rd of May 1808 or “The Executions”. 1814 2 Francisco de Goya that depicts Princess Margaret, Rubens’ works, particularly The 8. The Garden of Earthly Delights. 1500-1510 daughter to Philip IV, surrounded Three Graces, a painting that was Hieronymus Bosch by her maids of honour and jesters among his most prized posses- © Madrid, Prado Museum – and The Family of Charles IV by sions and for which his second Goya. In both works the painters wife, Helena Fourment, posed. Religious Paintings showed exceptional boldness, Velázquez also depicted multiple Particularly remarkable among the museum’s reli- breaking an unwritten rule by im- mythological themes, although gious pieces are Rogier van der Weyden’s The Descent mortalising themselves alongside his intent was not to arouse the from the Cross and Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation, members of the Royal Family. By senses but to offer allegories re- two prime examples of 15th-century European art, the painting himself into the portrait, flecting on power and authority. first produced in Flanders and the second in Florence. Velázquez asserts his own nobility The Spinners and The Feast of Worthy of special mention are the halls devoted to as well as that of the art of paint- Bacchus (aka The Triumph of Venetian painting, which feature outstanding works ing, as does Goya. Bacchus) are examples of this. including Tintoretto’s The Washing of the Feet, and to 3 16th- and 17th-century Spanish art, where El Greco’s 6 The Holy Trinity, Ribera’s The Martyrdom of Saint Philip, Zurbarán’s Saint Elisabeth of Portugal and Murillo’s The Immaculate Conception are displayed. A Window to the Past Through two of Goya’s paintings, The Executions and The Fight Against the Mamelukes (aka The Charge of the Mamelukes), we can relive the rebellion of Madrilenians against Napoleonic troops in May 1808. With these paintings, the artist changed the way the genre of history was understood, giving it a much greater immediacy. In the Prado's 19th-century halls, you can also find some later pieces, such as The Execu- tion of Torrijos and His Companions on the Beach at 4 Málaga by Antonio Gisbert Pérez. 5 1 4 7 Prado Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Museum In 1992, the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection arrived in Villahermosa Palace. It reflects the tastes of the two men chiefly responsible for assembling it, Baron Heinrich and Baron Hans Heinrich, who were well-versed in central European ar- Paseo del Prado, s/n tistic tradition. Since then the palace has been one of Madrid’s 902 10 70 77 top museums, and the collection has been expanded with works acquired by Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza. 17th-century Dutch museodelprado.es painting, 19th-century American painting, Impressionism and the historical avant-garde are very well represented. Monday to Saturday 10am until 8pm Sunday and holidays 10am until 7pm Revolution of the Portrait Mua (In Olden Times), to the Wild 8 3 There is a heavy focus on portrai- West, which was so aptly depicted Dreams and Nightmares ture at the Thyssen-Bornemisza by the painters of the Hudson Among the depictions of Hell and Paradise housed by the museum, Museum, with some outstand- River School, led by Thomas Cole. Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Haywain Triptych are ing Renaissance works such as This evocation of travel is even particularly unique, due not only to the extreme meticulousness with Ghirlandaio’s Portrait of Giovanna present in one of the collection’s which they were painted, but also to the dreamlike universe that they Tornabuoni and Carpaccio’s Young most famous pieces: Hotel Room depict. Works by other Flemish painters, such as Patinir and Brueghel Knight in a Landscape, one of the by Edward Hopper. The painter, the Elder, show a similar style. Centuries later and in Spain, Goya also first full-body portraits ever paint- who visited Spain during his explored horror and fear in the Black Paintings that hung on the walls of ed. Also from the same period, but formative years as an artist, his house, La Quinta del Sordo, which can now be viewed at the Prado. from northern Europe, are Hans acknowledged that his work was Holbein’s Portrait of Henry VIII enormously influenced by Goya, 2 of England and Robert Campin’s who he discovered in Madrid. Portrait of a Stout Man. Among the 20th-century portraits, pieces like Otto Dix’s Hugo Erfurth with Dog, Bacon’s Portrait of George Science Dyer in a Mirror and Lucian in Madrid Freud’s Reflection with Two Chil- King Charles III wanted Madrid dren (Self-Portrait) show a strong to be a leading centre of science. individual personality, although To this end he commissioned the they are, in some manner, heirs to construction of the Cabinet of Natural this same tradition. 3 History, which is now the Prado Museum, in front of the Botanical Around the World Gardens. Neoclassical architect Through the works in the Juan de Villanueva was chiefly collection you can travel around responsible for designing the complex. the world in the space of a few metres: from Piazza San Marco in Venice, painted in the 18th century by Canaletto, to Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain, as it was painted in 1897 by Pissarro, and from the landscapes of Tahiti, the inspiration for so many of 6 Gauguin’s paintings, such as Mata 7 1 4 The Curtain Rises Abstract and Figurative Art As paintings appeal to the sense of sight, many As if it were a guide to art history, the collection is Thyssen- canvases also present themselves as scenes from the so comprehensive that it allows us to appreciate the Bornemisza theatre. In the late 19th century, Degas was the artist diversity of the historic avant-garde in great detail.