The Prado Museum, officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and the single best collection of Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it also contains important collections of other types of works. The Prado Museum is one of the most visited sites in the world, and is considered one of the greatest art museums in the world. The numerous works by Francisco Goya, the single most extensively represented artist, as well as by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, and Diego Velázquez, are some of the highlights of the collection. Velázquez and his keen eye and sensibility were also responsible for bringing much of the museum's fine collection of Italian masters to Spain, now one of the largest outside Italy.
Guido Reni was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious works, but also mythological and allegorical subjects. Active in Rome, Naples, and his native Bologna, he became the dominant figure in the Bolognese School that emerged under the influence of the Carracci.
Francisco de Zurbarán was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname "Spanish Caravaggio", owing to the forceful use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.
Alonso Cano or Alonzo Cano was a Spanish painter, architect, and sculptor born in Granada.
The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808, it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's suggestion.
Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. Spanish art was particularly influenced by France and Italy during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics, partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain, and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.
La maja vestida is an oil painting on canvas created between 1800 and 1807 by the Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. It is a clothed version of the earlier La maja desnuda, which was created between 1795 and 1800. The identity of the model and that of the commissioner have not been confirmed. However, art historians and scholars have suggested she is María Cayetana de Silva or Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó. The Clothed Maja was created during the peak of Romanticism.
Maria del Rosario Weiss Zorrilla was a Spanish painter and engraver best known for portraits. She was the goddaughter of Francisco de Goya and lived with him during his final years when her mother was his maid. Over seventy of her drawings, preserved at the Hispanic Society of America, were once attributed to Goya but, in 1956, the art historian José López-Rey demonstrated conclusively that they were hers.
Francesco Ribalta , also known as Francisco Ribaltá or de Ribalta, was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period, mostly of religious subjects.
Antonio Fernández Arias was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period.
Juan de Espinosa,, Spanish Baroque painter specializing in still life painting. There is a great deal of confusion in the documentation of de Espinosa's life and works because there are a number of artists using the same name who also painted still lifes around the same time.
The Colossus, is known in Spanish as El Coloso and also El Gigante, El Pánico and La Tormenta. It is a painting traditionally attributed to Francisco de Goya that shows a giant in the centre of the canvas walking towards the left hand side of the picture. Mountains obscure his legs up to his thighs and clouds surround his body; the giant appears to be adopting an aggressive posture as he is holding one of his fists up at shoulder height. A dark valley containing a crowd of people and herds of cattle fleeing in all directions occupies the lower third of the painting.
Christ Crucified is a 1632 painting by Diego Velázquez depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus. The work, painted in oil on canvas, measures 249 × 170 cm and is owned by the Museo del Prado.
The Parasol is one of a cartoon series of oil on linen paintings made by the painter Francisco Goya. This series of paintings was specifically made in order to be transformed into tapestries that would be hung on the walls of the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Madrid, Spain. The tapestries showed serene events in everyday life, which made them a nice addition to the dining room of Prince and Princess of Asturias—the future King Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma. The queen called on Goya because she wanted to decorate the dining room with cheerful scenes; The Parasol and the other tapestry paintings were Goya's response to this request. The painting is currently located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid as is another in the series, Blind man's bluff.
Juan Antonio Ribera Fernandez, also Juan Antonio de Ribera was a Spanish painter.
Francisco Sans Cabot, in Catalan: Francesc Sans i Cabot was a Catalan painter who served as Director of the Museo del Prado from 1873 to 1881.
In the 18th century, the Spanish Baroque was moving towards a more ornate style. Sculpture, painting and carving blended with the architecture, sometimes to encourage classical architectural schemes that remain in force in floors and elevations. Facing the outside, usually austere, are creates vibrant interiors. This late-Baroque which employs profusely ornamental motifs as acanthus leaf, of Classical roots, begins to soak in the 1730s from the influence of French Rococo, exemplified mainly in the dissemination of a new decorative motif: the rocaille, consisting of complicated sets of "C" and "S" that generate asymmetrical shapes and also remind marine forms. The rocaille became known in Spain through three main ways: dissemination through the pattern books, the importation of furniture and other decorative arts from Europe and its direct brought hand of foreign architects, case of the Portuguese Cayetano de Acosta.
Saint Luke Painting the Crucifixion is an oil on canvas painting by Francisco de Zurbarán, executed c. 1650, also known as Crucifixion with Saint Luke or The Crucified Christ with a Painter. It is now in the Prado Museum. The figure of Saint Luke is thought to be a self-portrait of the artist.
Buenaventura Salesa was a Spanish graphic artist and painter in the Neo-Classical style.
