Treasures of the Prado

Spanish royal collections

When it opened on November 19, 1819, the Prado Museum, in Madrid, consisted entirely of works from the Spanish royal collections. Numerous treasures have been added since opening day, but the unique strengths of the Prado's collection can still be traced to that original core of remarkable works-many acquired or commissioned from the artists themselves during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
The Prado is internationally renowned for its unsurpassed collection of masterpieces by Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, and Peter Paul Rubens. As this richly illustrated little volume makes clear, it also possesses a brilliant collection of paintings and drawings by other artists throughout Europe as well as fascinating decorative arts and notable sculptures.

Anton Raphael Mengs

The idea of exhibiting the collections was first broached in 1775 by Anton Raphael Mengs, a painter, theorist, and guiding spirit of the Academy; that same year plans for a museum building were submitted by the great Neoclassical architect Juan de Villanueva. Construction of the building, which was intended to house both works of art and works of science (Villanueva also designed the Astronomical Observatory and the Botanical Gardens), continued desultorily over several decades, interrupted first by the death of Charles III toward the end of 1788 and then by the Napoleonic wars.

Joseph Bonaparte

In 1809 Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain from 1808 to 1814 during the Napoleonic usurpation, decided to establish a museum of paintings comprising works from the royal collections and those confiscated from the religious orders, which had recently been suppressed. This museum, which came to be known as the Museo Josefino, was to have been installed in the Buenavista Palace, but its progress was halted by the fall of the Napoleonic empire. There is a certain irony in the fact that the first attempt at opening a national museum was given impetus by a Napoleonic king and that it coincided with the Napoleonic wars, which led to the disappearance of so many important works from Spanish soil.

Ferdinand VII renewed the museum project

After the fall of Joseph Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons, Ferdinand VII (1814-33) renewed the museum project, but the convents' demands for the return of their paintings curtailed his plans considerably. With the support of his queen, Isabella of Braganza, he decided to place works from the royal collections on public display, and charged his majordomo, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, with the task of organizing this gallery; Santa Cruz in turn was aided by Vicente Lopez, First Painter to the Chamber. On March 3, 1818, the king ordered the restoration of Villanueva's superb Neoclassical building, begun in 1775, which had become the Museum of Natural History. Its construction had been well advanced by the time of Joseph Bonaparte's rule, but it had been heavily damaged during the wars and at one point had even been used to house French troops.

Repairs and funding

Ferdinand VII, who underwrote the repairs with his own personal funds, wanted the museum to be the setting for "the most beautiful paintings decorating his palaces." So it became. When it opened in November 1819 the museum already boasted more than fifteen hundred works, but the unusually uncrowded style of installation and the lack of display space meant that only a small portion of them could be shown. All were catalogued gradually, one room at a time, by the curator, Luis Eusebi. Though still owned by the crown and thus part of the king's estate at his death in 1833, the works in the Prado were not divided between his two daughters - a decision crucial to the museum's future. They went instead to Isabella II (1833-68), who compensated her sister for them. Throughout these years the Prado was continually enriched by the addition of works from the royal palaces, especially the Escorial, and of those purchased by successive rulers. In 1839 the Dauphin's Treasure entered the museum; a little later came drawings from the studios of the court painters. The Prado's collection of drawings now contains almost five thousand works, including those from the court painters and from the substantial bequest made by Pedro Fernández Durán in 1930. Most are Spanish and Italian.

Royal collection is still the core of the Prado Museum

In 1843 the first catalog of the collection, by Pedro de Madrazo, was published, incorporating 1,833 entries; the 1858 edition contained 2,001. The fall and exile of Isabella II in 1868 led to the dissolution of royal property rights and the reversion of all royal goods to the state. At that point the royal collection, still the core of today's Prado Museum, consisted of more than three thousand paintings.

Treasures of the Prado

Treasures of the Prado by Felipe Vicente Garín Llombart
ISBN: 0789204908

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