The Prado (pron: PRAH-doh) is the greatest painting museum in the world. If you like art and you plan to be in Europe, a trip to Madrid is a must. In its glory days, the Spanish Empire was Europe’s greatest, filling its coffers with gold from the New World and art from the Old. While there are some 3,000 paintings in the collection, we’ll be selective, focusing on just the top 1,500 or so.

The Prado Expansion: The museum is undergoing an extensive expansion project that will create exhibit space for many works long hidden in storage. The first extension, inaugurated in 2007, was partially constructed in the cloister of the 15th-century San Jerónimos church. This spacious addition houses a sculpture gallery and temporary exhibits, as well as a café and gift shop. Future additions in other buildings will provide space for more sculpture and decorative arts. This expansion, and any current special exhibits, may cause curators to jumble the museum’s layout, making many of the directions to my self-guided tour inaccurate. Pick up a detailed map when you enter the museum, consider renting an audioguide, and enlist the help of a guard if you’re unable to find a particular work of art.

Orientation

Length of this tour: Three hours.

Cloakroom: Your bags will be scanned (just like at the airport) before you leave them at the free and mandatory baggage check (no water bottles allowed inside).

Photography: Allowed but no flash and no tripods.

Cuisine art: There’s a cafeteria in the extension area by the Jerónimos entrance. For picnicking, the royal gardens are just south, and the huge, pleasant Retiro park is three blocks east.

Starring: Bosch, Goya, Titian, Velázquez, Dürer, El Greco.
New World Gold — Old World Art

Heaven and earth have always existed side by side in Spain — religion and war, Grand Inquisitors and cruel conquistadors, spirituality and sensuality, holiness and horniness. The Prado has a surprisingly worldly collection of paintings for a country in which the medieval Inquisition lasted up until modern times. But it’s just this rich combination of worldly beauty and heavenly mysticism that is so typically Spanish.

Gold from newly discovered America bought the sparkling treasures of the Prado. Spain, the most powerful nation in Europe in the 1500s, was growing rich on her New World possessions just about the time of the world’s greatest cultural heyday, the Renaissance.

The collection’s strengths reflect the tastes of Spain’s cultured kings from 1500 to 1800: (1) Italian Renaissance art (especially the lush and sensual Venetian art which was the rage of Europe); (2) Northern art from what was the Spanish Netherlands; and (3) their own Spanish court painters. This tour will concentrate on these three areas, with a special look at some individual artists who are especially well-represented: Velázquez, Goya, Titian, Rubens, El Greco, and Bosch.

* Orient yourself from the rotunda on the ground floor. Look through the doorway down the long gallery. The Prado runs north-south. Rooms branch off to the left (east of this long hall). The layout is similar on the floor above.

* From the rotunda, enter room 50, packed with medieval Spanish art.

Medieval Spanish Art

Spanish religious devotion and fanaticism are legendary. Look around. In this whole room, is there even one painting that isn’t of saints or Bible stories? I found one once. It showed heretics being punished by the Inquisition during an auto-da-fé — a combination revival meeting and barbecue (coals provided, B.Y.O. sinner). An estimated 2,000 enemies of God were burned alive during the reign of one notorious Grand Inquisitor.

One reason for Spanish fanaticism is that they had to literally fight for their religion. It took centuries of fierce warfare (711-1492) for Spain’s Christians to finally drive their Muslim rulers (the Moors) out. Later, in the Counter-Reformation (16th and early 17th century), Catholic Spain had to battle a new set of “infidels,” the Protestant threat. The iron-strong Spanish faith was forged in the fires of those wars.

* Enter the long gallery (Room 49) and belly up to the Annunciation altarpiece on your right.

Italian Renaissance (1400-1600)

Modern Western civilization began in the prosperous Renaissance cities of Italy during the years 1400 to 1600. Florence, Rome, and Venice led the way out of the Gothic Middle Ages, building on the forgotten knowledge of ancient Rome and Greece.

Unlike the heaven-centered medieval artists, Renaissance artists gloried in the natural world and the human body. They painted things as realistically as possible. For the Italians, “realistic” meant “three-dimensional,” and they set out to learn how to capture the 3-D world on a 2-D canvas.
Fra Angélico — The Annunciation (La Anunciación)

Fra Angelico combines medieval spirituality with Renaissance techniques. He himself was a monk of great piety (his nickname means “Angelic Brother”) living in the heart of Renaissance Florence.

This is more like two separate paintings in one — medieval on the left, Renaissance on the right. On the left are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden just after they’ve eaten the forbidden fruit. Scrawny and two-dimensional, they seem to float above the foliage. Eve folds her hands nervously, scrunching down, a weak sinner waiting for her punishment from an angry God. The message is medieval, as is the detail work in the flowers — a labor of love by a caring monk who was also a miniaturist. Also medieval are the series of storytelling scenes below illustrating events in the life of Mary for the illiterate faithful.

The Annunciation scene on the right is early Renaissance. The angel tells Mary she’ll give birth to the Messiah, a realistic scene set under a three-dimensional porch. The message is upbeat and humanistic, with the angel bringing the news that her son will redeem sinful man from the Fall. (Is it good news to Mary? She doesn’t look too thrilled.)

Still, the painting is flat by modern standards, and the study in depth perspective is crude. Aren’t the receding bars of the porch’s ceiling a bit off? And Mary’s hands just aren’t right, like washing the dishes with two left-hand rubber gloves. Notice the serene, spiritual atmosphere of the painting. There are no harsh shadows or strong light sources. Everything is bathed in a pristine, glowing, holy light. The only movement is the shaft of light shooting down from the hands of God, bringing redemption from the Fall, connecting the two halves of the painting and fusing medieval piety with Renaissance humanism.

* Farther along the same wall, look for .