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Three figures enjoy tobacco in an expressive manner in the foreground while an onlooker leans through the window. Around a table in the background, another group of figures drinks or plays cards. This is an example of scenes inside taverns with smokers, drinkers and players, which Teniers made during the sixteen thirties. He began with figures by his teacher, Adriaen Brouwer (1605/1606-1638), whic
The workshop of Jan Massys (c. 1509-1575) in Amberes produced a number of copies of this image based on a protoype by Quinten Massys, Jan’s father. Notable is the saint’s powerful look, which bestows dignity upon him. In line with new humanist ideas, the Church Father’s appearance of an aged scholar is abandoned, while the reference to the transience of life made through the skull and the depictio
Comprising three panels, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi and the Presentation in the Temple, this painting is earlier than the triptych on the same subject painted by Memling for Jan Floreins in 1479. It is clearly influenced by Van der Weyden, as are other works by the artist. In this work, the unified space represented in the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi is noteworthy. It was a
The Count of Orgaz died in 1323. According to legend, Saint Augustine and Saint Stephen appeared during his burial in the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo where, supporting the Count by the head and feet respectively, the saints deposited his body in his tomb. Quite different to El Greco´s famous interpretation, the horizontal format allowed Meléndez to present an impressive, theatrica
Mariana of Austria, Queen Consort between 1665 and 1675, talks to the Jesuit priest Nithard, her confessor and confidant, in the presence of her son Charles II, still a minor. The scene takes place in a room in the Buen Retiro Palace –on the left we see a Hieronymite monk– decorated by the painter with works related to Velazquez and King Philip IV: Las Meninas, the equestrian portraits of Philip I
This view of Aranjuez Palace was painted in 1756, on the occasion of the celebration of the saint´s day of King Fernando VI (1713-1759). This work was one of a group of views of the Palace and of the celebrations that took place there. Originally, there were probably four, but only this one and View of Aranjuez Palace (P04180, also in the Prado Museum) remain. The moment depicted here is the passa
Of the artists who painted war scenes in the 17th century, none was as interested as David Teniers II in capturing images from behind the lines. With his customary tactile rigor, he depicts a plethora of military objects lying in the foreground with no apparent order and a handful of figures hanging cuirasses or helping their colleagues to remove their footgear. At the same time, he draws on one o
The half-length figure of an old man is depicted against a dark background. He looks at the viewer out of the corner of his eye, with his torso turned slightly to the left and his head to the right, as he holds a candle in his right hand to light up a manuscript in his left, of which we can only see the back. Old Man reading by Candlelight is clearly a night scene, a genre in which Schalcken speci
In 1861 the Galician painter Avendaño was jointly awarded the State travel grant for landscape painting, together with Martín Rico. In the last third of the century he thus lived and worked in Genoa and Liguria. Avendaño favoured a type of naturalistic landscape with a misty, damp atmosphere. He habitually paid close attention to detail in both the background, which here depic
This view of Aranjuez Palace was painted in 1756, on the occasion of the celebration of the saint´s day of King Fernando VI (1713-1759). This work was one of a group of views of the Palace and of the celebrations that took place there. Originally, there were probably four, but only this one and Fernando VI and Bárbara de Braganza in the Gardens of Aranjuez (P04181, also in the Prado Museum)
The foreground display of numerous military elements, banners, drums, cuirasses and weapons, leads to a genre painting showing some soldiers resting in the background. On the left of the composition, one of the pages works to hang up the soldiers' clothes. Here, as in his other works, Teniers shows his capacity to use light to achieve a perfect representation of the qualities of the objects depict
The Chronological Series of the Kings of Spain was a museum project planned in 1847 by José de Madrazo to adorn four of the new rooms at the Real Museo de Pinturas (Royal Museum of Paintings), then under his direction. At the height of the confrontation between the supporters of Isabella II and the Carlists, who denied the sovereign’s right to occupy the throne because she was a woman, the
At the National Exhibition of 1892, history painting was definitively superseded by social realism. This was largely due to the prestige of this picture, which won the first medal in Madrid after previously obtaining the same distinction at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. Directly influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Jiménez Aranda paints an attractive naturalist scene with no trace
Although Bettini noted a number of paternal precedents for this painting, it is a personal interpretation by Francesco of the gospel passage. Three versions are known, of which the Prado painting is the last. The first, dated about 1585, was auctioned by Sotheby´s of Florence in 1984, and there is a preparatory drawing of the figures of the elderly man with a bear and the page on the left (V
Scattered around the room we see a large drum and pieces of several sets of armour –one of them still on its stand– and pistols and harquebusses hanging on the wall, on which a flag is also draped. In the background, several men, perhaps soldiers in civilian clothes, are smoking and drinking. Abraham Teniers repeats, with few variants, some of the famous compositions of his brother, the famous Dav
This set of paintings on the five senses was one of the most successful collaborations of Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel “the Elder”. Rubens placed his figures in the magnificent courtly scenes created by Brueghel as settings for these allegories of the senses, resulting in a series of enormous quality and esthetic appeal. The subject was widely employed in Flemish painting. Sight was consider
