Uno dei musei principali di Madrid è il Prado Museum. Esso forma, assieme ai vicini Reina Sofia Art Center e al Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, il Triangolo d’oro dell’arte di Madrid (Patrimonio UNESCO dal 2021). Allo stesso tempo, il Paseo del Prado, assieme al Buen Retiro Park e al Barrio de los Jeronimos che li contiene, è un paesaggio culturale patrimonio dell’umanità Unesco, che, nell’occasione di questo riconoscimento, è stato battezzato Paisaje de la Luz.
- The Origin of the Prado Collection
- Prado Museum Works
- Fra Angelico – Annunciation (1425-1428)
- Botticelli – Scenes from Nastagio degli Onesti (1483)
- Titian – The Cult of Venus (1518-1519)
- Titian – Venus and Adonis (1554)
- Caravaggio – David Victorious over Goliath (circa 1600)
- El Greco – The Adoration of the Shepherds (1612-1614)
- Rubens – The Three Graces (1630-1635)
- Velázquez – Las Meninas (1656)
- Goya – The Nude Maja and The Clothed Maja (1800-1808)
- Goya – The Execution (1814)
- Prado Museum Hours
- Tickets for the Prado Museum
Il patrimonio del Prado conta più di 21.000 opere, fra pitture, disegni, stampe e sculture. Circa 1.300, prevalentemente pitture, sono attualmente in esposizione. Per evitare letteralmente un’overdose da arte, questo articolo è una proposta di visita attraverso dieci capolavori esposti, per cogliere l’essenza della collezione ed essere sicuri di non perdere le opere più significative. Potrai trovare su FullTravel anche alcuni consigli su how to get around Madrid at low cost e how to visit the Spanish capital in two days.
The Origin of the Prado Collection
The building housing the Prado Museum dates back to 1785 and was originally intended for the natural history collection. In 1819, on the initiative of King Ferdinand VII and his wife Isabella of Braganza, it was transformed into a Museum of painting and sculpture. The original core of the collection was the rich art collection belonging to the royal household, then consisting of 1,510 works.
Ferdinand VII’s choice was in line with what was happening in other states at the same time (for example in France with the creation of the Louvre): exhibiting the royal collections to the public meant sharing an enormous cultural heritage with the people, for study purposes or simply for enjoyment. In the specific case of the Prado, the royal household also wanted to demonstrate to the world the value of Spanish artists, who were generally less known than other European artists.
Some Masters, such as Velazquez, Titian, Rubens and Goya, are present with a significant number of works, as they worked directly with the Spanish court. The collection of Goya’s works at the Prado, in particular, is the most important in the world, in terms of quantity and quality. Paintings by other artists, especially Italian and Flemish, were collected by members of the royal family over the centuries. A special case is El Greco, who, despite not being particularly patronized by the court, is rightly present with a significant number of works, given his relevance in the Spanish cultural scene.
Prado Museum Works
The Annunciation was the central scene of an altarpiece from the Convent of San Domenico in Fiesole, where Fra Angelico served as a friar and for whom the painter also created other works.
The painting is divided into two parts: on the left is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the earthly paradise, while on the right the angel delivers the good news to Mary who, simultaneously, is struck by divine light. The narrative represents the passage from sin to redemption, with Adam and Eve doomed to eternal damnation, whose only salvation is the birth of Christ, made possible by Mary. The two moments are clearly distinct also thanks to the very different setting. The Garden of Eden is lush and painted in great detail. A palm tree and red roses stand out in it, symbols respectively of martyrdom and the Passion. Mary is instead placed in an architectural space, a Renaissance portico which is also the perspective element of the composition.
The three panels exhibited at the Prado are part of a cycle of four paintings commissioned from Botticelli as a wedding gift for the Florentine couple Giannozzo Pucci and Lucrezia Bini. The story of Nastagio degli Onesti is told in Boccaccio’s Decameron and was chosen to characterize a wedding gift because it is a love story with a happy ending. Nastagio, in fact, is rejected by the woman he loves and for this reason flees to the forest outside Ravenna where he witnesses the infernal punishment inflicted on another woman who had rejected her lover. Since this brutal scene repeats every Friday, Nastagio decides to invite to dinner in the forest the woman who had rejected him and her family. When the guests see before their eyes the woman being chased and torn apart by fierce dogs, the girl who had rejected Nastagio changes her mind and agrees to marriage. The missing panel, kept in a private collection, depicts the couple’s wedding banquet.
This work is attributed to Botticelli, but scholars agree that the Master planned the cycle’s narrative and painted some of the characters, but enlisted the collaboration of two other artists for the overall execution.
This painting was commissioned by Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, for his Camerino d’Alabastro, a private room he wanted decorated with mythological scenes. For the Camerino paintings, Alfonso d’Este involved the best painters of the time: Titian, Giovanni Bellini, Dosso Dossi, Michelangelo (who did not deliver the work), and Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo, who died before completing their works, leaving only drawings. Titian, who had already painted Bacchus and Ariadne for this same room (kept at the National Gallery in London) and The Bacchanal of the Andrii (exhibited at the Prado), had to develop this work based on Fra Bartolomeo’s drawings.
The subject and source were chosen directly by Alfonso d’Este and are inspired by an annual celebration during which gifts were brought to the simulacra of Venus. Compared to Fra Bartolomeo’s drawing, Titian disrupts the composition, placing the statue of Venus at the far right of the painting and dedicating the entire central space to the crowd of cupids playing, gathering peaches, and embracing.
From the Camerino d’Alabastro, in addition to the two works by Titian, it is also possible to admire The Arrival of the Trojans at the Strophades Islands by Dosso Dossi at the Prado.
Venus and Adonis was a very popular subject, whose success was mainly due to Venus’s nudity. In particular Titian, unusually choosing to paint the goddess with her buttocks pressed due to the sitting position, adds an additional erotic charge to the image.
Titian painted about thirty versions of Venus and Adonis. The one preserved at the Prado is the oldest of the surviving ones. It was commissioned by Philip II and delivered to him in London in 1554. From the correspondence between the painter and the sovereign, we learn that Titian intended this painting to be displayed alongside Danaë, in which a naked Venus appeared opposite. In this way, the artist wanted to demonstrate how painting, like sculpture, is capable of exploring different points of view.
The depicted myth does not exactly correspond to Ovid’s version. Thus, as in other works, Titian performs an exceptional intellectual work of integration and adaptation of classical sources.
The work depicts the well-known biblical episode of young David who defeats the giant Goliath by first hitting him with a stone thrown with a sling and then beheading him. Caravaggio was the master of light and chiaroscuro and this work is proof of this remarkable skill. The light captures the physical gesture of the fight, illuminating the muscular arm and leg of the hero and Goliath’s shoulders, about to be beheaded. The gesture of pulling the hair to show Goliath’s face is not recorded in the Bible but was introduced by the painter for narrative purposes.
This painting is considered El Greco’s last work. He painted it to be placed above his tomb in the convent of Santo Domingo El Antiguo in Toledo. Therefore, among the shepherds appear the painter’s self-portrait and his son Jorge Manuel.
The chosen subject was considered a metaphor of resurrection and eternity. The figures’ shapes are distorted, a common feature of El Greco’s late works. The contrasts between light and shadows are particularly emphasized to enhance the sense of drama. The main source of light is the Baby Jesus, with obvious symbolic meanings.
El Greco, due to his tormented style strongly influenced by religious themes, was appreciated only long after his death. He is rightly considered a precursor of expressionism.
The Prado Museum owns about ninety Rubens paintings. The artist was in fact greatly appreciated by King Philip IV, who commissioned numerous works to decorate Madrid’s royal residences.
However, the famous painting of The Three Graces remained the artist’s property and was only purchased by the sovereign after his death. Myth has it that the Graces were part of Aphrodite’s circle and represented the values of love, beauty, and sensuality. This is why Rubens probably painted the work for personal use, to celebrate the joys of his new life after his second marriage.
Velázquez was the portraitist of the Spanish court for almost forty years, under Philip IV. Las Meninas represents the pinnacle of his career, both technically and conceptually.
The scene is set in a room of the Alcázar and depicts Infanta Margarita surrounded by her entourage of ladies-in-waiting and servants. Velázquez himself appears off to the side, intent on painting. The mirror instead reflects the image of Margarita’s parents, Philip IV and Mariana of Austria.
The complexity of the composition makes it particularly enigmatic. The most accepted interpretation is that Velázquez wanted to represent, through the genre that made him famous (portraiture), his professional status. Painters, in fact, were considered in Spain more as craftsmen than artists, but Velázquez had managed to earn a prominent role at court, also becoming curator of the royal painting collection. Thus he symbolically portrays himself, in the only known self-portrait, inside the Alcázar, surrounded by the royal family, demonstrating the peak of his career.
The use of the reflected image in the mirror is nothing new to the painter, just think of the face of the famous Rokeby Venus. But in this case there may also be a reference to a very topical theme of the time, namely illusion, brought to public attention by Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
The history of these two paintings, usually displayed next to each other, is quite controversial. Both were owned by Manuel de Godoy, Spanish Secretary of State at the end of the 18th century. The Nude Maja is recorded in an inventory of 1800 and was kept in a private room of de Godoy’s residence along with other nude paintings, including the famous Rokeby Venus by Velázquez, now exhibited at the National Gallery in London.
The Clothed Maja was painted a few years later, possibly to remedy an Inquisition inquiry which, upon discovering the nude version, put de Godoy and Goya on trial. Fortunately, there were no serious consequences, since at that time the Inquisition court had essentially lost its power. The paintings were confiscated, and Goya saved himself by saying he was inspired by Titian’s mythological nudes and the Rokeby Venus.
In reality, the Maja is not a mythological figure, but a common folk character, as also shown by the simple clothes of the second version. It is probably a portrait of a favorite of Manuel de Godoy.
Goya’s famous painting, also known as The Third of May 1808, is a work that changed the perception of war in art. It depicts the execution of some common people who had joined the Spanish resistance against the Napoleonic troops. The contrast stands out between the orderly aligned firing squad, whose faces we do not see, and the disordered mass of victims. On the left lie the bodies already executed (one even shows the sign of the coup de grâce on the forehead). In the center are those about to be shot, including the figure with outstretched arms in a gesture of surrender. Finally, on the right, another indistinct crowd awaits its turn to be executed.
In the past, war was always represented with an epic aura. Although there were also cruel depictions of the victims, artists tended to always use the style of grand historical painting. In Goya’s Execution, however, there is nothing heroic or glorious. The victims are ordinary people, there is an atmosphere of pure despair, and the execution is a mechanical and repetitive action.
This work by Goya, for its innovative narrative method, influenced some subsequent paintings, above all Manet’s The Execution of Emperor Maximilian and Picasso’s Guernica and Massacre in Korea.
Prado Museum Hours
- Regular opening hours:
Monday to Saturday – from 10:00 to 20:00
Sundays and holidays – from 10:00 to 19:00
Note: The Prado Museum is closed on January 1, May 1, and December 25. - Limited opening hours: On January 6, December 24, and December 31, the Prado Museum will be open from 10 to 14
- Free admission: Visitors can enjoy free admission to the Prado Museum on these days:
Monday to Saturday – from 18:00 to 20:00
Sundays and holidays – from 17:00 to 19:00
Access to the museum up to 45 minutes before closing time.
Tickets for the Prado Museum
