Museum Prado
Museum “Prado” presents the most beautiful part of the Venetian school and its most glorious period. It also has the largest collection of pictures on Rubens’ religious themes, the purest examples of realistic paintings Velasquez and Ribera as well as extraordinary pictures made by El Greco and Goya.
Cultural Institution of Great Importance
The museum “Museo del Prado” from Madrid is the Spanish national museum of art. It is a cultural institution of great importance; not because of the large number of works that are collected there but because of their priceless values. Experts say that there is no museum in Europe that can surpass “Prado” with the beauty of its paintings, which belong to the artistic creation of Europe from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
Apart from the magnificent collection of painting works, “Prado” has a significant collection of sculptures, drawings, Renaissance and Baroque jewelry, tapestries, medals and other forms of applied arts.
Kings who Loved Art
History of the museum is closely related to the history of Spain from the 16th till the 18th century, since the first collection of “Prada” comes from the period of unification of the country. Although the kings of Castile and Aragon were very fond of medieval miniature paintings, there are only few art works that can be claimed with certainty that originate from the collections of these dynasties.
In addition, many paintings from the collection of Isabella the Catholic are now in the royal palace in Madrid and not in the Museum Prado. Isabella’s heirs, from her grandson the Emperor Charles V until Ferdinand VII, who was a founder of the Museum, followed the example of the great governess. They received in service Spanish and foreign artists, ordered pictures and bought them at the exhibitions of old and modern masters.
Quantity and selection of works which Spanish kings collected over the time is rather confusing. The taste and visual culture of Philip II and his grandson Philip IV, who bought paintings from Titian, Tintoreto and El Greco is particularly astonishing. Moreover, Philip IV got the pictures from the most modern and most daring artists of his time.
Thus it can be easily concluded that the collection of the Museum Prado was acquired by legal means. Although these art works originate from the royal collections, they came from different parts of Spain. Moreover, some of them were purchased or ordered but some came as gifts.