Sponsored by Fundación Mutua Madrileña, the Chair of the Museo del Prado is one of the most important programmes organised by the Museum’s Study Centre based in the Casón del Buen Retiro, given that it benefits from the involvement of leading figures within the international museum and academic communities. This initiative was launched in 2009 with Museums. Where to now? directed by Philippe de Montebello, Director Emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It continued in 2010-2011 with The Line of Parrhasius. Strategies of drawing: experimentation, workshop practices and art history, led by the prestigious archaeologist and art historian Salvatore Settis, director of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, the results of which will shortly be published in a bilingual Spanish-English edition that contains all the lectures from the course, as was previously the case with the lecture series directed by Mr Montebello.

The lecture series of this third Chair of the Museo del Prado in 2012, directed by Jonathan Brown, an American hispanist, Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and leading expert on 16th- and 17th-century Spanish art and Velázquez, will focus on Golden Age Painting. This new Chair will analyse the history of Spanish art from the viewpoint of earlier studies, covering the revolution in this field that began in the 1970s. From his privileged position as one of the leading figures in that revolution, Jonathan Brown will look at how those new approaches arose, bringing together the different areas that have been the object of his studies since he was a young man and which together constitute a unique testimony for art historical reflection. His starting point will be the idea that history is malleable and mobile, a fact that has encouraged an ongoing revision of historical events, which have to some extent been adapted to the requirements and circumstances of each age. This phenomenon, which, as Professor Brown has noted, Oscar Wilde described as the fact that “History is an exact reconstruction of facts that never took place”, is recognisable not just to historians but also to art historians.

The programme will start with an overview of the studies in Spanish art undertaken between 1940 and 1960, their impact on Jonathan Brown’s early years and his visits to Madrid and the Museo del Prado in 1958 to 1959, and the reasons that led him to become an expert in Spanish art: how this was possible from his particular viewpoint, which at times ran contrary to the formalism and positivism that prevailed in Spanish institutions at that period. These experiences will be accompanied by his thoughts on the studies undertaken on the works by El Greco, Ribera and their studios that have acted as frames of reference for numerous important painters. Also to be analysed are the origins of the studies on the early modern European courts (the Spanish Habsburgs, Stuarts and Bourbons), how these studies were received by the Spanish academic world and their influence on the art of the Spanish courts from Charles V to Charles II. The progress in Velázquez studies over the past forty years and in the study of Spanish painting in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) will also be considered. These are “histories” in the plural that will lead participants to understand the ways in which the past is filtered in the present and vice versa.

The lecture series that constitutes the 2012 Prado Chair is principally aimed at professionals in the field of art history and archaeology, teachers and students but it is also open to the general public. Lectures will take place in the Museum’s Auditorium between May and October next year and will be complemented by a corresponding number of seminars that are only open to the 20 selected recipients of grants (who must attend them). These grant recipients will not be obliged to pay the course enrolment fee.

Enrolment

Enrolment can be made by filling out the online application form on the Museum’s website, www.museodelprado.es, between 22 November 2011 and 31 January 2012. Places will be awarded strictly in order of application. The fee for the entire course is 250 Euros for the general public, 180 Euros for members of the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, and 125 Euros for museum professionals, university professors and students. A certificate of attendance will be awarded at the end of the course.

Grants

The Museo del Prado will award 20 grants to young professionals aged 35 or under who have a higher degree related to the course’s contents. The award of a grant implies the waiving of the enrolment fee and the exclusive (and obligatory) attendance of the series of focused seminars that will analyse in more detail the contents of the course. They will be held on the Friday after each Thursday lecture at the Museum’s Centro de Estudios (Casón del Buen Retiro).

The grant application form is also available on the Museum’s website, www.museodelprado.es. The award of a grant will be made on the basis of the applicant’s academic record, educational studies and interest in the course, in addition to the assessment of a short text that each applicant must write explaining their reasons for wanting to participate in the course and stating their level of English. The application period is the same as that for enrolment.

Lecture Programme

Grants and Seminars

Enrolment