Touching the Prado. Museu de Girona

"Touching the Prado" has landed at the Museu d’Art de Girona. This is the Museo del Prado’s first initiative for visually impaired visitors: an exhibition of six images in relief, representing different art styles and genres that reflect the depth and richness of the museum’s collections.

Religious painting, mythology, genre scenes, portraiture and still life are the genres that the Prado has, for the first time in its history, made available to blind or partially sighted visitors by creating tactile reproductions of great works like Noli me tangere by Correggio, Vulcan’s Forge by Velázquez, The Parasol by Goya, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop, The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest by El Greco and Still Life with Artichokes, Flowers and Glass Vessels by Van der Hamen, the last three at full scale. At the Museu d’Art de Girona, these will be joined by a reproduction of Girona (IV) by Santiago Rusiñol i Prats, one of the Catalan museum’s most iconic works.

Developed in collaboration with visually impaired professionals, this project contains additional material such as panels and labels in Braille, audio guides that provide precise instructions on how to complete a tactile tour of the pieces on display, and blindfold-like opaque glasses so that sighted visitors can share in this sensory experience.

These artworks were reproduced in tactile relief with the Didú technique developed by Estudios Durero, using high-resolution photographs to create textures and volumes up to six millimetres deep.

After visiting Mallorca, "Touching the Prado" will continue to make these works accessible to people with some kind of visual impairment in other cities across Spain, including Girona, San Sebastián, Vigo, Valencia and Seville. At each venue, the show will also include a tactile reproduction of one of the host museum’s most iconic pieces.