Las Cortes

With more than 1,800 famous paintings on display, in 100 rooms on four floors, we had our day cut out for us!

The collection dates back to the Spanish monarchs of the 16th and 17th centuries. Their passion for collecting art and decorating their palaces with the best artwork, meant that at the end of the 17th century the finest royal collection in Europe was in Spain.

In 1819, the museum opened and since that date the building has been remodelled and enlarged to house its constantly growing collection. At present it holds more than 3,000 canvases.

With a Rick Steve’s suggested self-guided tour, we felt confident enough to tackle this vast museum on our own while hitting the highlights. The paintings had good descriptions in English that helped us to understand what we saw.

To start we saw altarpieces of early religious art by Hieronymus Bosch such as The Garden of Earthly Delights (1505). All of his images teach a religious messages that the pleasures of life are fleeting and we better avoid them or we’ll end up in hell.

We went on to see the realism of the Renaissance (1500s) with paintings by Raphael, Fra Angelico, Mantegna and Albrecht Durer.

Renaissance art spread to Spain which was Europes richest country at the time. One of the most famous court painters at this time was Velazquez. The most important painting in the museum was one that he painted called Las Meninas (1656). Another famous painter was Murillo who admired Velazquez.

Spain’s Golden Age kings, Charles V and Philip II both hired Europes premier painter - the Venetian painter Titian to paint their portraits around 1550.

Now we moved on to see the works of El Greco, Rubens and Goya. The world was changing and revolution was in the air. Goya painted the changing times and became a political rebel and a champion for the Revolution in France. That was all okay until the supposed hero of the Revolution, Napoleon, turned into a tyrant and invaded Spain. Goya through his paintings documented what happened during this time.

Goya also painted what they called “ cartoons” that were the templates for the big tapestries that hung on nobles’ walls.

At 46, he developed a mysterious illness (possibly syphilis) and lost his hearing.

After four hours of walking through this huge museum, we came to the last paintings done by Goya. Depressed, he retired to his small home when he was in his 70s, and smeared his walls with his “black paintings”. Dark in colour and mood. During this period In his life he painted his nightmares. The paintings are actual murals painted on the wallpaper on the walls of his house and later carefully transferred onto canvas.

By the way, even with our little guide and the museum map, it was hard to figure out where to go in this huge museum. It was a labyrinth of rooms with beautiful works of art on every wall.

It was strictly prohibited to take photos in the Prado Museum. Argh…But many of the paintings we saw are on online so guess what? I’m going to post a few of the more famous ones I found and a few that Chris sneakily took…Read more