The Museo del Prado and the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum are presenting the exhibition Rubens. Painter of Sketches. Sponsored by Fundación AXA and with the collaboration of the Government of Flanders, it offers an analysis of Rubens as the most important painter of oil sketches in the history of European art.

Of the nearly 500 oil sketches executed by Rubens over the course of his career, this exhibition includes 73 loaned from leading institutions world-wide, including the Louvre, the Hermitage, the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum, and also from the collections of the Prado and the Boijmans (which have two of the largest holdings of this type). On display for four months in Room C of the Jerónimos Building, the sketches are shown alongside a number of prints, drawings and paintings by Rubens which provide a context for them, bringing the total number of works on display to 93.

Following its showing at the Prado, Rubens. Painter of Sketches will travel to the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in September.

The Museo del Prado is presenting an exceptional exhibition in terms of both the unusual nature of the material and its fragility, due to which some of the works on display are scarcely known to the public.

The exhibition brings together a selection of nine paintings on monochrome stone (slate and white marble) by Italian painters such as Sebastiano del Piombo, Titian, Daniele da Volterra and Leandro Bassano, which reflect the consolidation of a new approach to artistic techniques that emerged in the early decades of the 16th century. They are displayed alongside classical Roman works and specimens of natural stone that provide a context for the relationship between painting and natural history, geology and archaeology.

Three of the works from the Prado’s own collection selected for the exhibition have undergone lengthy and complex restoration, funded by Fundación Iberdrola España as Protector Sponsor of the Museum’s Restoration Programme.

Thanks to the support of Telefónica as a Benefactor Sponsor of the Visitor Services and other Users improvement programme, the Museo del Prado is now the first Spanish museum and one of the few in the world to make its historical archive available online. By doing so it is leading the way in free access to information by making it possible to consult both its collection of works of art and the contents of its archive online.

This initiative offers nearly 12,000 digitalised documents, including: the Museum’s ground plan and elevation; the list of the paintings on display in the Sala Francesa in 1887; the appointment of Pablo Picasso as the Prado’s director in 1936; and the personal archives of the Madrazo family, of Valentín Carderera, one of the leading figures in the Spanish 19^th-century art world, and of Salvador Viniegra, deputy director of the Museum between 1890 and 1898.

The outstanding quality of the Óscar Alzaga Villaamil donation makes it a significant addition to the Museo Nacional del Prado’s collection.

The donation comprises 7 paintings encompassing a broad chronological span, from the late 16th to the mid-19th centuries, by artists from Spain, Italy and Bohemia. All of them were painted in Spain with the exception of the Ligozzi, but four were acquired abroad by the donor, for which reason their entry into the Prado’s collection represents an important enrichment of Spain’s national artistic heritage.

For the first time, the Museo Nacional del Prado is exhibiting the 6 paintings that entered its collections last March thanks to the generous donation made by Óscar Alzaga Villaamil, which also included a financial contribution that has been used to acquire the Portrait of Manuela Isidra Téllez-Girón by Agustín Esteve, also included in this exhibition.

The Museo del Prado opened to the public on 19 November 1819 as a Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture. In 2019, we celebrate our Bicentenary a commemoration that will reveal the path covered since 1819 until today. On this special occasion, we wish to reflect on the future and the forthcoming challenges for this and the other great Museums of ancient painting: the need to attract social groups that traditionally are not attracted by the collections, to encourage gender and minority research studies or the challenges caused by overcrowding.

Furthermore, for the following years the finalization of the Prado Campus is expected, adding the last building, the Hall of Realms, the old Buen Retiro Palace, an incorporation that will imply a rethinking of the current display of the collections. The activity plan for the bicentenary reinforces the usual programme of the Museo del Prado, insisting on the above mentioned aspects.