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Until now, this canvas was thought to come from San Felipe el Real in Madrid, as Cruzada Villaamil (1865, no. 544, p. 38) mistakenly registered it. He believed it was one of the canvases mentioned by Palomino at that Augustine convent: "in a chapel beside the door to the cloisters there is a painting by him of Saint Joachim leading Our Lady as a girl by the hand; and another painting coupled with
The Garden of Earthly Delights is Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation. For Falkenburg the overall theme of The Garden of Earthly Delights is the fate of humanity, as in The Haywain (P02052), although Bosch visualizes this concept very differently and in a much more explicit manner in the centre panel of that triptych than in The Garden of Earthly Delights. In order to analyse the work’s me
The picture belongs to a group of scenes set inside a stable which Wouwerman began painting in 1655. This cycle is an exception in the painter`s output, which was mainly focused on outdoor scenes. Most of these stable views are based on the same compositional scheme: two-thirds of the panel is occupied by the dark interior of the stable, which opens out on the left towards a landscape painted in m
Saint Mena extends his arms and raises his gaze to Heaven, refusing to worship the graven idol presented to him at the left of the composition. As a result, he was martyred and decapitated. His suffering occurred in the year 296, under the rule of Diocletian. It is indicated here by the sword held by the person who has seized the saint, and by the pliers in the basket, which were used to pull out
On August 29, 1626, King Philip IV’s painter, Vicente Carducho (ca. 1576-1638), signed a contract for the creation of a cycle of paintings to celebrate the founding of the Carthusian Order by Saint Bruno and its leading members. This colossal undertaking sought to visually narrate numerous episodes from the Carthusians’ history and tradition. It was the most complete commission ever dedicated to t
In 1865 the Government of Isabel II commissioned Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer to capture the customs and costumes of Spain´s provinces. This work is part of that project whose anthropological bent was very much in keeping with the Romantic mentality. It shows one of the traditional dances from the province of Soria. This work entered the Prado Museum in 1878 from the now-defunct Museu
The Virgin and Child are placed on a hill in the centre of the foreground, isolated from the rest of the figures, as in the Berlin panel (Gemäldegalerie ). The dark forest here begins in the middle ground behind the Virgin, merging with the background landscape to one side of the main figure. The countryside to the right, with the motifs of the farm, the village in the middle ground and the c
Saint Joseph holds a flowered staff. He is accompanied by the Christ Child, who offers him a basket with carpentry tools, alluding to the saint´s profession. The worship of Saint Joseph was especially favored by the Council of Trent and devotion to him became especially widespread in Spain, where numerous paintings were also made. The technique used in this painting, with outstanding chiaros
Saint Apollonia was one of the virgins martyred in Alexandria (Egypt) in the third century, A.D. during the religious persecution of Christians. In this small plate on copper, the Bolognese painter captures the moment when two henchmen torture the saint, who is tied to a post, by extracting her teeth with large pliers. That explains why this tool (sometimes including teeth) is her customary attrib
In keeping with his interest in Queen Juana “la Loca,” Pradilla painted this painting of the queen´s confinement in Tordesillas Castle, where she spent the rest of her life alongside the cadaver of her husband. Juana sits besides a window in a palace room with a Gothic fireplace. Lost in thought, she gazes at the viewer without noticing her daughter´s play. A lady in waiting and a servent on the r
This panel inlaid with mother-of-pearl executed in New Spain is part of a group of twenty-four pieces that narrate the capture of Mexico.
Paired with (P07726, P07727 y P07728). These are sketches for cartoons for tapestries intended to adorn the King’s Antechamber known as the “Pieza de Conversación” in the Royal Palace of Madrid. Based on the allegories painted by Corrado Giaquinto for the equivalent room in the Palace at Aranjuez, they are notable for the apocalyptic symbols, such as the dove of the Holy Sprit conveying God
Part of a series of 118 views of Spanish ports, bays, islands, arsenals, etc. that Charles IV, King of Spain, commissioned in 1781 when he was Prince of Asturias and that kept the artist busy until 1803.
Al poco de su muerte se recordaba que Alenza recorría como Goya los barrios bajos de la Corte, las tabernas, los ventorrillos de las afueras, las casillas del río, observando las fisonomías, trajes, maneras y usos populares para trasladarlos a sus cuadros. A esos suburbios madrileños ha de corresponder la ambientación de este lienzo que se halla entre lo mejor de su producción. Pintado en 1844, en
This painting is the result of two acts carried out in different periods. First, Velázquez painted the surface occupied by the figures and the tapestry in the background. Later, in the 18th century, a wide strip (with the arch and oculus) was added to the top, along with narrower ones on the left, right and bottom (these additions are not visible in the current presentation of this work). T
This work and its pair, A Saxon Villager Driving a Barrel with a Wheelbarrow (P2271), may have been gifts sent by the Elector of Saxony, Augustus III, to his daughter, Queen Maria Amalia, and his son-in-law, Charles of Bourbon. This eighteenth-century taste for popular scenes is reflected in several of the monarch’s commissions, such as those for the tapestries of José del Castillo, Bayeu a
This painting illustrates a scene from Goethe´s Faust. Specifically, the moment when Margaret finds a jewelry box in her bedroom closet. Mephistopheles gave it to Faust as a tempting gift for his beloved. The young woman enjoys hanging a string of pearls around her neck and observing the beautiful results in the mirror. A spinning wheel is visible in the dark background. This work shows the influe
