The Prado Museum has architecturally rehabilitated the space of the north Ionic gallery of the Villanueva building as part of its objective to increase the visibility of its sculpture and decorative arts collections.

The gallery will be open to the public from May 19^th, bringing together 56 sculptural pieces that range from Ancient Egypt, through the Greco-Roman period, up to the Renaissance and Baroque periods; precious objects that transmit the validity of classical language and its interpretation through the centuries, of the tangible closeness of three-dimensional works and the rich variety of the Prado Museum's collection.

This exhibition, which is benefiting from the sponsorship of the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado and the collaboration of the City Council of Madrid for its showing at the Prado, reunites until June 12, a group of exceptionally important wall paintings (last seen together in 1833) which can be considered the great unknown work in Annibale Carracci’s oeuvre: the surviving frescoes from the chapel of Juan Enríquez de Herrera’s family in the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome.

The recent restoration of the seven frescoes housed in the Prado and the collaboration of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica Palazzo Barberini in Rome have allowed these works to be studied, researched and reassessed.

The special installation for their display in the exhibition allows visitors to appreciate the original location of the works at different heights in the chapel and what the decorative scheme as a whole would have looked like.

Curated at the Prado by Andrés Úbeda, Associate Director of Curatorship at the Museo Nacional del Prado, the exhibition will open to the public on March 8 and will travel to the MNAC in July, then finally to the Palazzo Barberini in November.

On display until 3 July in Room 83 of the Villanueva Building, The Sense of Smell, a painting by Jan Brueghel and Rubens, is the focus of The Essence of a Painting. An Olfactory Exhibition, curated by Alejandro Vergara, Chief Curator of Flemish Painting and the Northern Schools at the Museo Nacional del Prado, and Gregorio Sola, Senior Perfumer at Puig and an academician of the Perfume Academy, who has created ten fragrances associated with elements in the painting.

Brueghel’s work, which evokes the garden of rare trees and plants belonging to Isabel Clara Eugenia and her husband in early 17th-century Brussels, depicts more than 80 species of plants and flowers, as well as various animals associated with the sense of smell, such as the scent hound and civet, and a range of objects relating to the world of perfume, including scented gloves, vessels holding fragrant substances, a perfume burner warmed in a sumptuous brazier, and vessels for distilling essences.

Room 60 in the Villanueva building brings together a selection of eight works by Francisco Pradilla housed in the Museum. Together with the large painting Doña Juana la Loca and her sketch, exhibited in room 75, these works will enable the visitor to make a tour of his career as a history painter, a part of his profession that gave him his greatest fame. We also celebrate the centenary of the death of this artist, who was Director of the Prado Museum.

The exhibition is sponsored by Ramón y Cajal Abogados and reflects the interest in history painting and the period for which Pradilla had a predilection, the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, presenting two stages of its production: the initial one devoted to the success of his painting Doña Juana la Loca, and the final one, between 1906 and 1910, when the genre fell into disuse.