Prado Museum Free Tour

Goya is the most featured artist in Prado. The museum has dedicated the
highest number of rooms for the works of this single artist.

Prado’s collection is the richest and most varied collection of Goya’s paintings in the world. That gives us the opportunity to get a deep knowledge of his art and to follow his evolution as a painter.

Goya’s art works are spread around the museum in three different floors of the southern block:

On the second floor: the tapestry boards and the first works of the painter.

On the main floor: his works until 1800, including the Two Majas.

On the ground floor: his late works (The Second and Third of May of 1808 and The Black Paintings).

This Greek artist has one of his best known works exposed on the walls of Prado Museum. He wasn’t truly recognized during his lifetime, it was much later when the artists of the Avant-garde started studying his work and gave it the value it deserves.

When El Greco arrives in Spain, he is already an experienced painter. The biggest part of his life he spends in the city of Toledo, where he develops his style and creates one of his most important works as a painter.

Later he also has a big contribution for the decoration of the monastery El Escorial (build by orders of king Philip II). With these paintings he proves to master completely the Venetian technique and the oil on canvas.

The Flemish painter (considered to be the most influential artist of the
Flemish Baroque tradition) has a special place in Prado Museum. He was one of the most valued painters, recognized during his lifetime and had a remarkable influence on a number of artists that lived in his age and after.

He was deeply involved not only in the cultural life of Europe in the XVI and XVII century, but also in the political and social areas. Thanks to him the profession of the painter and the artist in general started to be a respected one in society ,something that the generations before him couldn’t
achieve.

During the tour you can observe the evolution of his style and the way he masters the oil technique with paintings like “Adoration of the Magi” and “The Three Graces”.

He is one of the main representatives of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed and boldness of his brushwork. For his phenomenal energy in his painting he was called Il Furioso (“The Furious”).

His work is characterised by his bold use of perspective, dramatic gestures and the remarkable ability to portray motion in his paintings.

During the tour you can witness all that in oneof his most interesting works: “Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet“.

Hieronymus Bosch is one of most enigmatic and influential artists of the Renaissance. His work contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Because of his unique style, today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity’s deepest fears and desires.

During the tour you’ll have the privilege to see one of his most valued paintings. Due to the big appreciation of his art, shown by the Spanish king Philip II, Spain keeps the biggest number of Bosch’s originals.

In Prado you can see six of them, among which the triptychs: “The Garden of
Earthly Delights”, “Adoration of the Magi” and “The Haywain”.

The Prado Museum is a pioneer in the technical study of Bosch’s work, lead by Pilar Silva Maroto (Head of the Department of Conservation of Flemish Painting and the Northern Schools in Prado).