Museo del Prado in Madrid

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Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain features one of the greatest collections of European art from the fourteenth century until the early nineteenth century. This collection is impressive and can easily compete with what can be found in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Besides the art collection at “El Prado” (Spanish equivalent), here there is also found an impressive collection of over 5,000 drawings, 2,000 prints, 1,000 coins and almost 2,000 decorative objects. Sculpture is represented by more than 700 art works and by a smaller number of sculptural fragments. The splendid gallery of paintings (8600 paintings) is the factor that gives the museum an international reputation.

The most extensive collection of Spanish paintings in the world is on display at the Prado: over 4,800 works by artists from the Peninsula, dating from the romantic period up to the XIXth century. The museum exhibits a series of excellent collections signed by El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Raphael, Bartolome, Esteban Murillo, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco Goya, as well as Hieronymus Bosch (the favorite artist of King Philip II of Spain). Of these, only Goya collection numbers over 140 works. The Italian collection includes over 1,000 art works and includes works from the XIV-XVIIIth century, signed by FraAngelico, Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, Boticelli, Titian - more than 40 paintings, Veronese, Tintoretto, Bassano, Raphael, Correggio, Caravaggio, Giambattista Tiepolo. The gallery dedicated to Flemish school contains over 1,000 works signed by Bosch, Antonis Mor, van der Goes, Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens. French, Dutch and German panting is represented in the Prado by the works of Poussin, Durer, Vermeer and Frans Hals, among others.

The most famous work of art displayed here is Las Meninas by Velázquez. Velázquez provided the museum with his own beautiful paintings. The famous painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso was unveiled at Prado, but was moved to the Museo Reina Sofia, where there is a larger exhibition space for the huge canvas. The main attraction of the museum is The Three Graces by Rubens, an art work representing three nude women dancing in a circle.

Prado Museum is housed in a building built during the reign of Charles III, part of an urbanization plan that had the goal to make Madrid a monumental city. Carlos III of Spain, who reigned between 1759 and 1788, dreamed for Madrid to have attractions and museums as important as those of the other major European capitals. So he started building beautiful edifices, museums and others in a bid to help the Spanish capital compete with other cities such as Rome, Paris or London. Works on the building have been suspended after the reign of Charles III and the Spanish War of Independence, being continued again during the reign of his grandson, Ferdinand VII.

The most recent expansion was the incorporation of two buildings (nearby buildings, not adjacent) into the institutional structure of the museum. Cason del Buen Retiro houses from 1971 the majority of works of art from the nineteenth century. Palacio de Villahermosa now houses the Museum Thyssen Bornemisza, whose collection was originally gathered from private properties (works that were not part of the state collection).

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