Prado Museum - Culture Time 🎨

After the tiny dabble in the arts in the park I wandered into the Prado museum. The taxi driver from the airport yesterday answered my question “if you could only do 1 thing in Madrid what would it be?” with this museum. It was also starting to warm up to the top of 35 today so decided some out of the sun, air conditioned time would be good.

Alas no pictures from inside (rules are rules) but I can give you a text based description. Lots of religion (and I mean a lot of Jesus, saints, angels and other godly things). Once past the religion you get royals, ladies holding strategically placed leaves or fruit, battles, landscapes and ‘romantic realism’ (whatever that is). There are also sculptures with plenty of 🍆.

Occasionally throughout the gallery were artists with their boards painting reproductions of the existing works. It looks painstakingly difficult but also kind of thinking like - get your own material. I guess the copyright on these works is all well and truely public domain now?

While I don’t get art, the quality of the work and clarity of the paintings is amazing. Given these are from a time where HD camera phones weren’t a thing the attention to detail and storytelling are why these are still drawing crowds hundreds of years later. I do wonder whether someone’s Instagram reels will be playing in a gallery in a few hundred years time. Is that the art our generations will leave behind?

I also may have acted like Grace and hovered near some of the paid tour guides as they explained some of the art (refer to Will & Grace where Grace steals exercise routines at the gym). My final note is I’d prefer to have my royal portraits hung on a dark red wall. It’s a nice look.Read more