El camarín del desengaño. Juan de Espina, coleccionista y curioso del siglo XVII, by Pedro Reula Baquero, 2019
Juan de Espina Velasco (1583−1642), a nobleman of Madrid and cleric of minor orders, has gone down in history – initially as the unwitting protagonist of two eighteenth-century magical plays by the dramatist José de Cañizares and subsequently, in the twentieth century, as the enigmatic and jealous owner of the Leonoardo da Vinci manuscripts now in the Biblioteca Nacional de España. His early fame as a necromancer comes from rumours that circulated in his own day about the entertaining scientific activities he organised in his home in the form of natural magic shows, where, making use of a certain amount of technology, he put the audience’s credulity to the test. He also set out to bring back the lost genre of enharmonic music, which ordered the music scale perfectly and mathematically and with which the ancient musicians were said to work wonders on men’s nature and state of mind. In addition to the Leonardo codices, his home housed an exquisite collection of books, paintings, precious metalwork and ivory pieces – objects classified as naturalia and artificialia, which made up what we would now call a cabinet of curiosities, commonly known in Spain as a camarín.
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Nacer en palacio. El ritual del nacimiento en la corte de los Austrias by María Cruz de Carlos Varona, 2018
Motherhood, which stands at a disciplinary crossroads, has become a historiographic subject in its own right. It has gone from being viewed as an exclusively biological circumstance to being considered a key social factor in shaping the historical identity of the queens of Spain. This book analyses the ‘ritual’ surrounding the birth of royal offspring at the Spanish court between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the role played by queens, ladies-in-waiting and midwives in a cultural system based on a series of rites performed before and after childbirth.
El coleccionismo de pintura en Madrid durante el siglo XIX by Pedro J. Martínez Plaza, 2018
This book examines the private collecting of painting in Madrid during the nineteenth century and the mercantile structure that underpinned it. The author analyses more than 140 private collections and studies the presence, development and running of shops, fairs, markets, estate sales, antique dealers and art galleries, many of them hitherto unknown, as well as surveying the role of the foreign collectors and artists and restorers who acted as advisors, intermediaries, sellers, promoters and agents.
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This exhibition opens the anniversary celebrations by offering a survey of the museum’s history that focuses on the dialogue between the Museum and society; heritage policies in Spain; the trends that have guided the growth of the museum’s collection and its transformation into a place that has allowed Spanish and foreign writers, intellectuals and artists to reflect on the country’s past and its collective identity.
Art at the court of Philip IV was an international language devoid of local boundaries. The work of Velázquez after 1623 is best understood in this international context. He was deeply influenced by paintings in the royal collections, especially works by Titian, Tintoretto and Rubens. One of his key experiences was the trip to Rome in 1629 where he encountered classical and Renaissance art and established contacts with his contemporaries in Italy. The exhibition underscores such internationalism through a selection of 61 paintings associated with Velázquez, the Spanish royal collections and the Spanish Golden Age. More than twenty of these works were painted by Italian, Flemish and French artists, including Titian, Rubens, Luca Giordano, Jan Brueghel, Anthonis Mor, Giovanni Lanfranco, Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa, Massimo Stanzione and Guido Reni. Spanish artists are represented through works by Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo, Alonso Cano, Pereda, Maíno, Sánchez Coello, Mazo, Van der Hamen and others.
This exhibition focuses on Spanish drawing manuals of the 17th and 18th centuries, locating them in their international context. These rare and innovative manuals responded to changing trends in the theory and practice of art. While such learning aids were produced across Europe, this exhibition will highlight the unique features of Spanish examples through works by José de Ribera, Pedro de Villafranca y Malagón, José García Hidalgo, Friar Matías de Irala and José López Enguídanos.
This exhibition is the result of the research undertaken for the publication of a new catalogue raisonné of Goya’s drawings, a subject to which the Museo del Prado has always devoted particular attention and which is one of the keystones of its collection. The exhibition will bring together more than 100 drawings by Goya from the Prado’s own collections and from public and private ones around the world. It will be presented as an extensive chronological survey of the master’s oeuvre, ranging from the Italian Sketchbook to the Bordeaux Albums. It will also offer an up-to-date vision of the ideas that recurrently appear in Goya’s work, revealing the ongoing and long-lasting relevance of his thinking.
The exhibition will reveal the artistic personality of two of the most outstanding women artists in western art. Through a total of 60 works and for the first time, the Museo del Prado will jointly present the most important paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1535–1625) and Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614). The two artists achieved recognition and fame among their contemporaries for and despite their status as female painters. Both were able to break away from the prevailing stereotypes assigned to women in relation to artistic practice and the deep-rooted scepticism regarding women’s creative and artistic abilities. In particular, Sofonisba Anguissola had close connections with the Spanish court as tutor to Queen Elizabeth of Valois and later official court painter to King Philip II.
This exhibition project will recreate the original aspect of Room 39, known as Their Majesties’ Retiring Room. First opened in 1828, it was intended as a portrait gallery of the Bourbon Dynasty. The images on display were accompanied by still lifes, floral compositions and landscapes and by other paintings that depict events from the reigns of Charles III and Ferdinand VII. This installation will recreate the hanging of the paintings at different heights and will include some of the furnishings made for this space, including Ferdinand VII’s toilet.
This exhibition on late 16th- and early 17th-century Dutch and Spanish painting is the result of an extensive and important research project on the part of the Museum arising from a collaborative agreement with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which will be lending a significant group of works. The exhibition will offer a reflection on the pictorial traditions represented by Spain and the Low Countries. While Dutch art-historical literature has considered these traditions as essentially different, this exhibition will aim to juxtapose the historical myths and artistic realities of the two countries and to reflect on the numerous traits that they share. In order to appreciate these parallels the exhibition will include major works by artists such as Velázquez, Rembrandt, Ribera, Frans Hals and Vermeer.
Prado 200 is a new feature within the museum’s permanent display. This installation is presented as nine chronological sections which will present the museum’s history with an emphasis on its architecture, public image and its principal exhibitions and activities. Curated by Victor Cageao, it will include works of art and documentary material from the permanent collection and from the holdings of the Museum’s archive and library (paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, documents, architectural models, plans, etc.), displayed in Rooms 100, 101 and 102 of the Villanueva Building. It will be accompanied by a specially designed online timeline providing access to graphic and technical documentation on the Museum’s history.
