The world of Velasquez and Goya - The Prado - Madrids premier tourist attraction

Plaza de Colon end of the Gran Via
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If you hire a painter to do your portrait, and particularly if you are royalty - you expect him to do a good job don't you?

Well, Velasquez did a good job - but still the Spanish royal family look like idiots in their portraits. Of course due to intermarriage and inbreeding they practically were by that time. But I cant help wondering how he got away with it? How did he not escape the noose when his portraits were so unflattering..

skeletal horse is riden at full pelt by a skeleton wielding a scythe and a dog is chewing a baby. Gruesome, macabre and fascinating in equal measure.

Plaza de Cheuca during daylight
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These are the kind of thoughts which flit around your mind in the Prado. There is no question this is Madrids best tourist attraction and the only place in the city where the crowds really build up. Its one of the great art repositories of the world - up there with the National Gallery in London, The Vatican Museum, The Uffizi, the Louvre and the Hermitage. Like those mentioned it gets its source from a collection gathered by royalty. The Spanish Habsburgs/Bourbons had the likes of Goya and Velasquez as court painters. They could also have the services of El Greco and Tintoretto. And when the Netherlands became the Spanish Netherlands the works of the Dutch masters fell into their hands as well..

Its housed in an enormous building of pink sandston on the Paseo del Prado. First up was the 16th Century school of Spanish art and the Demarecon by Botticelli. But this was nothing compared with Breughals grisly 'The Triumph of Death' - a massive detailed canvas showing armies of skeletons invading a village and butchering humans. A skeletal horse is riden at full pelt by a skeleton wielding a scythe and a dog is chewing a baby. Gruesome, macabre and fascinating in equal measure.

El Greco was next and his portraits all had a sickly hue to me. Some enormous canvases were nearby including the famous Goyas '13 Mayo' depicting the executions of partisans when Napoleons troops entered the city in 1808. And of course the two kings who really built Madrid. Charles V had an underhanging chin and devout Phillip II had a weary jaded look in his eyes.

The second floor contains the biggies - Velasquez and Goya. Crowds gathered around 'Saturn devouring his son'. But the portraits of the Spanish Royal family who were already in trouble for inbreeding (Juana the mad anyone?) were most fascinating. Felipe IV looked ill, goggle-eyed and not long for this world. The greatest painting in the world, allegedly, is 'Las Meninas' an unflattering portrait of the Spanish family with their royal children and a particualarly ugly dwarf. Its considered great because of the perspective - unique for the time

'Las Barrachos' is a favourite of mine and consists of two leering sozzled old drunks. Your Spanish has to be OK as well to decipher the Castilean only little notes. You can work out what they say from the picture. For example there was a picture of the heavens with milk squirting out of a goddesses breasts and arcing into the ether". The caption read "Los creatos de la via latreda". "Latada" means milk, and Via - way - as in Gran Via. Put them all together for "Creation of the milky way.."

Simple really...