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Museo del Prado
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
The Museo del Prado is a
famous art museum located in
Madrid. It features one of
the world's finest collections
of paintings from the
14th century through the
early
19th century. Founded as a
museum of
paintings and
sculpture, it also contains
important collections of more
than 5,000
drawings, 2,000 prints,
1,000
coins and
medals, and almost 2,000
decorative objects and works of
art. Sculpture is represented by
more than 700 works and by a
smaller number of sculptural
fragments. The superb picture
gallery consisting of 8,600
paintings is the factor which
lends the Museum its world class
status. The Prado undisputedly
has the world's finest
collections of works by Spain's
Diego Velázquez and
Francisco Goya, as well as
of Dutch painter
Hieronymus Bosch (a personal
favorite of King
Philip II of Spain). The
museum also has excellent
collections of
El Greco,
Peter Paul Rubens,
Raphael,
Titian,
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo.
Fine examples of the works of
Melozzo da Forlì,
Botticelli,
Caravaggio,
Albrecht Dürer,
Rembrandt,
Veronese,
Hans Baldung,
Fra Angelico,
van der Weyden and many
other notable artists are on
display in the Museum.
The most famous work on display
at the Museum is
Las Meninas by
Velázquez. Velázquez not only
provided the Prado with his own
superb works, but his keen eye
and sensibility was also
responsible for bringing much of
the museum's fine collection of
Italian masters to Spain.
Pablo Picasso's famous work
Guernica was exhibited
in the Prado upon its return to
Spain after the restoration of
democracy, but was moved to the
Museo Reina Sofía to take
advantage of a superior space
for the exhibition of the
immense canvas.
One of the main promenade
entrances to the Prado is
dominated by this bronze statue
of Diego Velázquez.
The Museo del
Prado is one of the buildings
constructed during the reign of
Carlos III as part of
a grandiose building scheme
designed to bestow upon
Madrid a monumental urban space. This "prado"
(meaning meadow in Spanish) gave
its name to the area (Salón del
Prado, later Paseo del Prado),
and later still to the Museum
itself upon
nationalisation. Work
on the building stopped between
the conclusion of Charles III's
reign and during the
Peninsular War and
was only initiated again during
reign of Charles III's grandson,
Ferdinand VII. The
structure was used as
headquarters for the
cavalry and a
gunpowder-store for
the
Napoleonic troops
based in Madrid during the War
of Independence. Upon the
deposition of
Isabella II in
1868, the Museum was
nationalized and acquired the
new name of Museo del Prado. The
building housed the royal
collection of arts: it rapidly
proved too small. The first
enlargement to the Museum took
place in
1918.
The most recent enlargement was
the incorporation of two
buildings (nearby but not
adjacent) into the institutional
structure of the Museum. The
Casón del Buen Retiro since
1971 houses the bulk of
19th century art. The
Palacio de Villahermosa now
houses the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum,
the bulk of whose collection was
originally privately gathered
and not part of the State
collection, but which well
serves to fill the gaps and
weaknesses of the Prado's
collection; the Thyssen
Bornemisza has been controlled
as part of the Prado system
since
1985.
During the
Spanish Civil War, upon the
recommendation of the
League of Nations, the
Museum staff removed three
hundred and fifty-three
paintings, one hundred and
sixty-eight drawings and the
Dauphin's Treasure and sent the
art to
Valencia, then later to
Girona and finally to
Geneva. The art had to be
returned across French territory
in night trains to the Museum
upon the commencement of
World War II.
Mention should
be made of Madrid's other two
national museums near by: the
Museo Arqueológico houses some art of
Ancient Egypt,
Mesopotamia,
Greece, and
Rome formerly in the
Prado Collection; the
Museo Reina Sofía houses
20th century artwork.
Supplementing the Prado with
these two museums, as well as
the Buen Retiro and
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (all within a short walk of each
other), the visitor to Madrid
can get a view of the history
and scope of the finest art of
Western Civilization
perhaps to be rivaled in any one
city only by the collections of
the
museums of Saint Petersburg,
museums of Paris and the
museums of London.
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