Displaying items by tag: museo del prado

After 19 years of restoration work, Michelangelo's "Young Saint John the Baptist" (1495-96) has gone on display today at the Museo del Prado.

The sculpture, Spain's only Michelangelo, was destroyed during the Civil War (1936-39) at the Chapel of the Savior of Úbeda, in Andalusia, where it was first put on display back in the 16th century.

The sculpture was not only hammered to pieces, but its head was also burnt. According to "El País," the damage was most likely caused by the anarchist faction.

The Spanish newspaper "El Confidential" has reported that the Museo del Prado has purchased a Renaissance triptych, depicting the birth and adoration of Jesus, for €4 million.

The artist behind the piece remains unidentified, but experts have deduced it was painted in around 1450 in Castilla, Spain. It previously belonged to the Álvarez Fisa Collection.

The Museo del Prado presents "Danaë and Venus and Adonis : Titian's Early Poesie for Philip II," an exhibition that will showcase the first two "Poesie" created by Titian following their recent restoration. The artist painted these works in the mid-sixteenth century and they can be seen together for the first time since Ferdinand VII presented Danaë to the Duke of Wellington as a gift. Alongside these masterpieces, visitors will be able to contemplate another of the versions of Danaë belonging to the Museo del Prado, which was created by Titian in around 1565. This work was paired with another work, "Venus and Adonis," in the "Bóvedas de Tiziano" Halls at the Real Alcázar Collection.

Inspired mainly by Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the themes chosen by Titian for these works are portrayed in order to delight the senses and demonstrate the capacity of painting to convey emotions.

For the first time in Spain, the Museo del Prado is presenting a selection of 87 Spanish drawings dating from the 16th to the early 19th centuries from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In terms of quality and quantity, this institution houses one of the most important collections of Spanish Old Master drawings outside Spain, numbering more than 200 works. Assembled in Seville in the early 19th century, it was subsequently sold on the London art market and acquired by the Hamburg museum in 1891.

The core of the collection comprises drawings by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and by some of his most important contemporaries and followers, many of them associated with the Academy founded in Seville by Murillo, Juan de Valdés Leal and Francisco de Herrera the Younger. In addition, the exhibition includes important works by other leading Golden Age masters such as Alonso Cano and Antonio del Castillo.

Spain’s minister of education, culture and sport, José Ignacio Wert, has dispelled any fears that some of the Museo del Prado’s Renaissance masterpieces could be transferred to a planned Royal Collections museum, due to open in 2016. Appearing on Spanish television, Wert assured viewers that the issue “has been resolved” and that the transfer of the works “will not happen”, reports EFE news agency.

Spain’s Museo del Prado may lose some of its most famous works to a new museum for the Spanish Royal Collection, set to open in 2016. According to a report by Spanish paper, El Confidencial, the president of the country’s national heritage authority, José Rodríguez-Spiteri Palazuelo, has requested that the museum return four paintings to the Royal Collection. The paper claims that Palazuelo sent the request to Museo del Prado director Miguel Zugazza in a letter on July 24th.

The four works requested to be returned are: Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1500-1505) and The Seven Deadly Sins (1500-1525), Tintoretto’s Washing of the Feet (1548), and Roger van der Weyden’s The Descent from the Cross (c. 1435).

Spain’s Museo del Prado has lost 885 artworks, according to El Pais. The newspaper, citing a report by Spain’s Audit Court, claims that the Madrid-based institution was missing 926 works at one point, 41 having been found between 2008 and 2012. Those works had been misplaced during a restructuring period of the country’s national collections held at the Prado and the Reina Sofia museum of contemporary art.

In their report, the court cites, “Lack of sufficient human resources,” as the culprit behind the missing artworks. They have demanded an internal review and continued searches within the museum’s collections and its lending history to identify the whereabouts of the missing art.

Nothing quite stirs the emotions like walking into a gallery to see an original masterpiece.

Seeing that same piece on a digital screen may not have the same effect until now, but one Spanish group claims iPad art-viewing could give a greater insight than you might think.

Madrid’s famous gallery, Museo del Prado, has released an iOS app that allows you to peel away layers of famous paintings to uncover the intimate, and often frightening, secrets lurking beneath.

The Museo del Prado, the main Spanish national art museum located in Madrid, received the largest private donation in decades on Tuesday, January 29, 2013. Prado officials announced that the museum was the recipient of 12 medieval and Renaissance works by Spanish artists.

Barcelona-based businessman and engineer Jose Luis Varez donated the collection to the institution during a ceremony, which counted the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy among its guests. Jose Pedro Perez Llorca, president of the Prado’s board of trustees, said, “These aren’t times of lavish state spending, so this donation is generous and tremendously timely.” Spain’s dire economic standing has led to severe spending cuts in an attempt to meet public deficit targets.    

The recently acquired paintings and sculptures include the central panel of an altarpiece from a church in northeastern Spain titled The Virgin Tobed (1359). The Catalan Italo-Gothic painting is believed to be by 14^th century artist Jaume Serra (died after 1405). The works will join the Prado’s exemplary collection, which includes paintings by Spanish masters such as El Greco (1541-1614), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828).

To thank Varez for his generous donation, the Prado will name a room in the museum in his honor.

Titian’s Saint John the Baptist entered Madrid’s Museo del Prado’s collection in 1872 but rather than being credited to the Italian painter of the 16^th century, it was said to be by an anonymous Madrid School artist of the 17^th century. Fourteen years later, the painting was sent to the parish church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Cantoria in the province of Almeria where it remained on loan until 2007.  

The Prado held an exhibition of Titian’s work in 2003 and published an accompanying catalogue in which Miguel Falomir, Head of the Department of Italian and French Paintings at the Museum and the exhibition’s curator, suggested that the painting in Cantoria was a copy of a long-lost Titian painting. In 2007 the Museum embarked on a study of the work only to find that the piece was not a copy but an original Titian painting. The work’s preparatory layer of white lead and calcium carbonate and the similarities between that painting and two other depictions of Saint John the Baptist done by the artist in the early 1550s helped researchers to date the painting and bolstered their decision to re-attribute the work to Titian.

The work arrived at the Prado in poor condition and underwent thorough restoration by Clara Quintanilla. The will be on display alongside the two other versions until February 10, 2013.