Madrid Travel Guide: The Prado Museum - Museo del Prado
Housed in a gigantic neo-classical building begun by Juan de Villanueva for King Charles III in 1785, the Prado Museum is Madrid's best-known attraction. Charles originally wanted to establish in Prado, a museum of natural sciences, reflecting one of his chief interests, but by the time Prado opened, in 1819, this plan had changed: the Prado was a public art museum - one of the world's first - displaying the royal art collection. Spain's 'non-king', Joseph Bonaparte, had first proposed the idea of the Prado art museum and it was taken up by the restored King Fernando VII, who took on board the demands of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes and those of his second wife, María Isabel de Braganza, considered the museum's true founder.
During the last few years the Prado museum has undergone a highly ambitious expansion programme, inculding the remodelling of the Casón del Buen Retiro, an annexe opposite the Retiro park, which today houses the works of Luca Giordano. Behind the main part of the Prado museum, on the site of the San Jerónimo cloisters, the new and highly controversial cube-shaped edifice of the Prado museum, designed by Rafael Moneo was also unveiled.
As for the collection of the Prado museum, the core is still the royal holdings, so it reflects royal tastes and political alliances from the 15th to the 17th centuries: court painters Diego de Velázquez and Francisco de Goya are well represented. Political ties with France, Italy and the southern, Catholic Netherlands also assure in the Prado museum the presence of works by Titian, Rubens and Hieronymous Bosch, among others. The collection of the Prado museum did have some gaps, mainly owing to Spain's hostilities with England, Holland and other Protestant states and the Spanish monarchs' unfamiliarity with artists pre-dating the High Renaissance, but recent acquisitions for the Prado museum have evened things out somewhat.
Spanish monarchs had begun collecting long before the Prado museum, and by the 1500s Queen Isabella already had a substantial collection of works by Flemish artists. During the reigns of Emperor Charles V (1516-56) and Philip II (1556-98), Italian and Flemish works continued to dominate. Titian was a favourite of both kings, and the eclectic Philip II also purchased several works by Bosch, among them the enigmatic, slightly surreal triptych Garden of Earthly Delights, which he had hanging on his bedroom wall in El Escorial. The white face beneath a hat in the 'Hell' panel is widely believed to be the artist himself.
Philip IV (1621-65) is seen as the greatest of the Habsburg art collectors, and the leading connoisseur of his day, long before the Prado museum. Flemish influence was still very strong, and the king was a major patron of Rubens. The latter was contemptuous of Spanish painters until he saw the work of the young Velázquez, who would serve Philip IV as court painter for nearly 40 years (1623-60). Velázquez also supervised the acquisition of other works for Philip IV, adding nearly 2,000 paintings by Renaissance and 17th-century masters.
Spain's first Bourbon King, Philip V (1700-46), brought with him one of the Parado museum's most extraordinary possessions, displayed in the basement: the Tesoro del Delfín ('Treasures of the Grand Dauphin'). The Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XIV of France and father of Philip V of Spain, accumulated a massive art collection, part of which was left to Philip, now in the Prado museum. The 'Treasure' is mostly 16th- and 17th-century Italian objets d'art, such as rock-crystal vases studded with semi-precious stones and with gold and silver trims.
The last monarch to add significantly to the royal collection of the Prado museum was Charles IV (1788-1808), the employer of Goya, possibly the least respectful court painter who ever lived - for Goya's portrait of Charles IV's family. Following Charles's death, the collection of the Prado museum would be supplemented by later purchases and works seized from religious houses following their dissolution in the 1830s.
Highlights
With such a concentration of masterpieces, it is impossible to do the Prado museum justice in a single visit. The free maps provided at the entrances of the Prado museum, available in English, will help guide the visitor to the must-sees. The ground floor of the Prado museum contains earlier painting and sculpture: stunning Spanish Romanesque murals and Gothic altarpieces; works from the Italian Renaissance (masterpieces by Botticelli, Titian, Caravaggio and Rafael, whose Portrait of a Cardinal is pictured on p80); 15th-century Flemish painting, with the world's greatest collection of Hieronymus Bosch; plus El Greco, and German paintings such as Dürer's extraordinary 1498 Self-Portrait. Also on this floor of the Prado museum you'll find the classical and Renaissance sculpture, and the vault that currently houses the Tesoro del Delfín, until its eventual transfer to the Palacio del Buen Retiro.
Entering via the Puerta Alta de Goya , you reach the first, and what is considered the 'principal', floor of the Prado museum. Here you encounter French and Italian 16th-and 17th-century painting, with works by Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Artemisia Gentileschi, among others, followed, on the left, by several rooms of Flemish works (Rubens, Breughel, van Dyck). Stretching ahead on the right of the Prado museum is a long gallery with Spanish paintings of the same period, featuring Murillo, Ribera and Zurbarán (his Saint Casilda is featured on p85). This leads to one of the Prado museum's greatest attractions: the Velázquez Rooms.
In the great hall in the centre of this floor of the Prado museum are Velázquez's massive state portraits of Philip IV and his court, with their air of melancholic grandeur, and his wonderful Surrender of Breda (known in Spanish as Las Lanzas), which are all due to move to the Palacio del Buen Retiro at some point. Pride of place, though, is taken by Las Meninas, often described as the greatest painting in the world, because of its complex interplay of perspectives and realities. Velázquez inserted himself at the left of the picture, supposedly painting a portrait of the king and queen, who appear bizarrely in a 'mirror' at the end of the room, but in whose place stands every viewer, watched forever by Velázquez, the little Infanta Margarita and other figures in the painting. Different but equally impressive are the artist's extraordinary Los Borrachos ('The Drunkards') and the portraits of the royal dwarves, also to be found in the Prado museum.
The rooms of the Prado devoted to Goya, are at the south end of the first floor and on the floor above. Every stage of his career is superbly represented here in the Prado museum, from cynical portraits of the aristocracy to the Majas. An important recent addition to the collection of the Prado museum is his portrait of the Marquesa de Chinchón. In the Prado, there are also his tremendous images of war, such as the masterpiece The Third of May, depicting the executions carried out by French troops in Madrid in 1808. Even more fascinating than these are the Pinturas Negras or 'Black Paintings', the turbulent pictures executed by Goya in his final years. Witchcraft, violence and historical drama combine in an astonishing array of monstrous images, many originally painted on the walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo, between 1819 and 1823. On the second floor of the Prado museum there are his earlier, lighter, portraits and the carefree tapestry cartoons he designed for the royal palaces. Here too are European paintings from the 18th century. A couple of rooms of the Prado also contain works by the German neo-classical master Mengs, the Italian Tiepolo and the French painter Watteau.
Address
Paseo del Prado s/n,
Retiro
Transport
Metro Atocha or Banco de España.
Telephone 91 330 29 00
Open 9am-8pm Tue-Sun
Admission €6; €3 concessions;
free under-18s, over-65s. Free to all Sun.
