The Prado [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The Prado owes its existence to the Spanish monarchy's love of art, for it is the royal collection that is the backbone of the museum, and the Spanish collection its core. This is the reason for the presence of so many artists connected with the court -painters and official portraitists from Sánchez Coello at the court of Philip II to Goya at the court of Charles IV, and throughout the nineteenth century from Vicente López onwards. The court also acquired many paintings by artists who were in fashion even though they worked far from Madrid. This was the case with Queen Isabel Farnese, who sought out works by Murillo in Seville in 1729 and managed to obtain a number of his paintings. However, the work of the regional schools and medieval religious painters were poorly represented in the royal collections, either because they had no connections with the court or else were not yet fully appreciated. When the contents of the Museo de la Trinidad were incorporated into the Royal Museum in 1872, the Prado received many religious works of the Madrid and Toledo Schools along with a number of important Trimitives'. However, there were still large gaps in its collections and it is only recently that these have begun to be filled. It was not until 1946, for example, that any Romanesque paintings were hung in the Prado, although Romanesque art had figured prominently in the museum in Barcelona since 1926. In recent years CastiHan, Andalusian, Aragonese, Catalan and Valencian Primitives have been acquired. Similarly, as a result of purchases and donations over the last 50 years, some outstanding examples of the Baroque schools of Valencia, Córdoba, Granada, Seville and other regions have been added. The growing interest in Spanish eighteenth-century art has led to the acquisition of works from this period, and a similar policy has been followed with respect to the nineteenth century, the number of paintings from which has increased considerably.