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In his Metamorphoses Ovid recounts the torments of the Giant Tityus, whose punishment for having attempted to rape the goddess Leto was to have two vultures devouring his continually regenerating liver for eternity. This work is Titian´s own late repetition of the original, painted by him for Mary of Hungary as part of a series of Furies. It was conceived as a warning for those who dared to challe
This painting features a young and attractive “Manola” [woman of the people, particularly in Madrid] reminiscent of the famous actress nicknamed “the Tyrant” portrayed by Goya. Slightly recumbent on a finely-carved couch, she is wearing a striking blue gold-embroidered short jacket. The picture is highly charged with sensuality and eroticism, embodied through her languid gaze, her gesture of cover
The principal beams are decorated with secular scenes, including dances, jousts or men fighting monsters, and with the coats-of-arms of Castile and León and those of the Luna and Rojas families. Other decoration includes sacred scenes (the Last Supper and the Last Judgement, for example). Between the transversal beams are panels with alternating castles and lions and elongated hexagonal pan
Fortuny’s predilection for beautifully colored and very carefully painted panels is perfectly exemplified by the present work, which reveals his mastery of tableautin, a type of painting that garnered considerable commercial success for artists such as Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), although the latter’s execution was much more meticulous and drawn. The Orientalist genre was also the ob
Alonso Sánchez Coello was court painter to Philip II and he united two different pictorial styles developed in the mid sixteenth century by Titian and Anthonis Mor respectively. Sánchez Coello´s images are austere in their presentation, yet they include certain symbolic elements that place the sitters in a suitable context easily legible to the viewer. The sitters´ dress and certain
An image of Saint John the Baptist as a child. He wears an animal skin and sits on a boulder from which water flows. The background is landscape. A lamb is beside him. In his right hand he holds a staff with a banner reading “Ecce Agnus Dei” (“This is the Lamb of God”). Although Mignard is primarily known as a successful portraitist, he occasionally worked in other genres. This canvas, depicting t
This surprising canvas presents the image of the Virgin of Atocha, just as she was worshipped on her altar at the Dominican convent dedicated to her on the outskirts of Madrid. This type of votive image with luxurious rigid clothing that gives the figure a conical silhouette—hence their popular characterization as “funnel” images—is very characteristic of the 17th century and quite frequently repr
The Triptych in the Museo del Prado labeled as Scenes from the Life of Christ is a pivotal work in the story of Valencian painting in the fifteenth century and in the transmission of the style and technique of Jan van Eyck to the Iberian Peninsula. The panel entered the Prado collection in 1931 from the convent of the Encarnación in Valencia, a Carmelite foundation established in 1502. It w
After establishing himself in Paris as portrait painter to the elegant and cosmopolitan high society of his time, Raimundo de Madrazo cultivated a particularly abundant clientele among the great ladies of the French capital. A posterior trip to America allowed him to expand his client base to include the leading families of New York. In the 1870s, when Raimundo was beginning to make a place for hi
The panel has been trimmed on all four sides but little of the painted surface can have been lost. It is made from two boards of Baltic oak, both from the same tree; the last ring was formed in 1372. Black overpaint conceals areas of damage on our left of the Virgin`s face and on our left of the Child`s head and torso. On our right of the Virgin, a similar area of black overpaint may hide a shadow
The earliest documentary reference to this painting appears in the 1772 inventory of the Palace of the Buen Retiro, in which the setting is attributed to Viviano Codazzi (1603/4-1672) and the figures to Aniello Falcone (1607-1656). However, this architectural view has traditionally been considered part of the set of landscapes -with hermits and bucolic scenes- commissioned in Rome to decorate the
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos was one of the most illustrious representatives of the Spanish Enlightenment, a man of letters, writer and poet, as well as a statesman with advanced ideas. Born in Gijón in 1744, he received his Doctorate in Law from the University of Salamanca. He was interested in art and admired Goya from early on, having commissioned him to paint his portrait shortly after
Este oratorio portátil es una pieza excepcional que aúna dos delicados trabajos de Damián Forment y Juan de Juanes, figuras fundamentales del Renacimiento en la Corona de Aragón. La representación central del conjunto es la placa de alabastro donde aparece san Jerónimo en su retiro penitencial en el desierto, aunque convertido éste en ámbito rocoso significado por el árbol del primer término en do
Three boys -two standing and one seated- are playing chito, a game in which metal disks known as tejos are thrown at a piece of carved wood (the chito) resting on the ground with a coin on top of it. The goal is to topple the chito, causing the coin to fall. The player whose tejo is closest to the fallen coin wins.
This portrait epitomises Rococo style and is one of the most delicate and sophisticated paintings of Paret’s oeuvre, both in terms of the subject and the technique. It depicts his wife, María de las Nieves Micaela Fourdinier, at the age of 26, after eight years of marriage and two daughters together, whom the painter portrayed in another copperplate (in a private collection) that forms a pa
María Isabel of Braganza was born in Lisbon on 19 May 1797, daughter of John VI of Portugal and Carlota Joaquina of Spain. She became queen of Spain when she married her uncle, Ferdinand VII, on 28 September 1816 and became his second wife. She died during childbirth in Aranjuez on 26 December 1818. It must be noted that this is a posthumous portrait. The artist was the son of Vicente L&oac
The Museo del Prado has four drawings (e/f [D04184, D04183], g/h [D04342, D04342/1], i/j [D04185, D04186], m/n [D07360, D07360/1]) with scenes on both sides from what is known as Goya’s Album A or Sanlúcar de Barrameda Album, as it was rapidly assumed to have been made by Goya in that city in the province of Cadiz during his stay there between spring 1796 and March 1786. The work presented
The Museo del Prado has four drawings (e/f [D04184, D04183], g/h [D04342, D04342/1], i/j [D04185, D04186], m/n [D07360, D07360/1]) with scenes on both sides from what is known as Goya’s Album A or Sanlúcar de Barrameda Album, as it was rapidly assumed to have been made by Goya in that city in the province of Cadiz during his stay there between spring 1796 and March 1786. The work presented
