Let's end our visit to the Prado with what is considered their most famous painting:

Velazquez
(1599 - 1660)

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of the Baroque period (c. 1600–1750). He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Velázquez

Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour)
1656-1657
Oil on canvas
318 x 276 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/9fdc7800-9ade-48b0-ab8b-edee94ea877f

 

 

 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
(1836 - 1912)

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, OM, RA (born Lourens Alma Tadema) was a Dutch painter who later settled in the United Kingdom becoming the last officially recognised denizen in 1873. Born in Dronryp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in London, England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there. A classical-subject painter, he became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean Sea and sky. Alma-Tadema was considered one of the most popular Victorian painters. Though admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, his work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been re-evaluated for its importance within nineteenth-century British art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Alma-Tadema

The Siesta, or Pompeian Scene
1868
Oil on canvas
130 x 369 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-siesta-or-pompeian-scene/207eb13d-cde6-43df-8a94-7a24fed2b69a

 

Guiseppe Bonito
(1707 - 1789)
 

Giuseppe Bonito  was a Neapolitan painter of the Rococo period. Giuseppe Bonito is known for genre depictions on canvas. Many of Gaspare Traversi's paintings had previously been attributed to Bonito.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Bonito

The Turkish Embassy in Naples
1741
Oil on canvas
207 x 170 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-turkish-embassy-in-naples/8e6b08e7-63d6-4d25-b439-1a5af33b3bfd

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
(1617 - 1682)

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017–18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomé_Esteban_Murillo

Nicolás Omazur
1672
Oil on canvas
83 x 73 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/nicolas-omazur/83b32eaf-4999-4ba3-811d-501fdcf6b3e7

Born in Antwerp in 1609, Omazur was a friend and admirer of Murillo’s. He established himself as a merchant in Seville where he wrote poetry and collected painting. The austerity of the image links it to the Spanish and Flemish traditions, while the presence of the skull transforms it into a “Vanitas”, inviting us to reflect on the transience of worldly glory.

Anthony van Dyck
(1599 - 1868)

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Spanish Netherlands and Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_van_Dyck

Sirs Endymion Porter and Anthony van Dyck
Ca. 1635
Oil on canvas
119 x 144 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/endymion-porter-and-anthony-van-dyck/4f405157-fc39-45bd-a82f-6e70e978968b

 Claude Lorrain
(1600 - 1682)
 

Claude Lorrain (born Claude Gellée called le Lorrain in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in Italy, and is one of the earliest important artists, apart from his contemporaries in Dutch Golden Age painting, to concentrate on landscape painting. His landscapes are usually turned into the more prestigious genre of history paintings by the addition of a few small figures, typically representing a scene from the Bible or classical mythology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Lorrain

Landscape with the Embarkment of Saint Paula Romana in Ostia
1639/40
Oil on canvas
210 x 1456 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/1104a62a-edeb-4449-ab0b-7f8c57edee3a

 

 

Nicholas Pocock
(1740 - 1821)
 

Nicholas Pocock was an English artist known for his many detailed paintings of naval battles during the age of sail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Pocock

Paisaje con figura a caballo (Landscape with a figure on horse)
1787
Oil on canvas
76 x 113 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/3d45d1f1-20d1-4f8f-947e-6411a760fad6

David Roberts
(1796 - 1864)

David Roberts RA RBA was a Scottish painter. He is especially known for The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia, a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region (1838–1840). These and his large oil paintings of similar subjects made him a prominent Orientalist painter. He was elected as a Royal Academician in 1841.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Roberts_(painter)

El Castillo de Alcalá de Guadaíra (The Castle of Alcalá de Guadaíra)
Ca. 1833
Oil on panel
40 x 48 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-castle-of-alcala-de-guadaira/bc854a73-3630-4e66-963c-2036e01c72ed

 

 

 Yesterday I posted his portrait so today a work from the master himself. Difficult to choose: a lot of his paintings are in the Prado…

 

Francisco Goya
(1746 - 1828)

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes  was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Goya

El Tres de Mayo (The third of May)
1814
Oil on canvas
260 x 340 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/5e177409-2993-4240-97fb-847a02c6496c

 

A depiction of the execution of patriots from Madrid by a firing squad from Napoleon´s army in reprisal for their uprising against the French occupation on the second of May, 1808. The French soldiers are at the right of the composition, with their backs to the viewer. They aim their rifles at the Madrilenes who are to die. The scene´s drama and tension are emphasized by the use of light, which strongly illuminates the heroes, making it possible to distinguish their characters and attitudes in a detailed psychological character study

 

 

Vicente López Portaña
(1772 - 1850)
Vicente López Portaña, OIC was a Spanish painter, considered one of the best portrait painters of his time. In 1826, López painted a portrait of Francisco Goya when the famous master visited the court from Bordeaux, where the Aragonese painter was then living. Goya was then 80 and would die two years later. It was said that Goya got bored posing for his colleague who was very meticulous and a stickler for detail, and that for this reason the portrait is inferior to others by López. However, for this precise reason, and because of the strong personality of the model this is one of López's most lively and best-known works. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente_López_Portaña

Portrait of Francisco de Goya
1826
Oil on canvas
100 x 78 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/d24dba94-d730-44c5-8b46-1f1732d2b571

 

 

 Juan van der Hamen
(1596 - 1631)

Juan van der Hamen y (Gómez de) León was a Spanish painter, a master of still life paintings, also called bodegones. Prolific and versatile, he painted allegories, landscapes, and large-scale works for churches and convents. Today he is remembered mostly for his still lifes, a genre he popularized in 1620s Madrid.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_van_der_Hamen

Portrait of a Dwarf
C. 1626
Oil on canvas
122 x 87 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/portrait-of-a-dwarf/972bf374-7410-415d-81f3-0ed2444913bd

A sumptuously dressed and armed dwarf holds a ruler´s staff, an attribute of power that cannot have corresponded to his status. He was probably one of the court buffoons, who were showered with presents and dressed in ostentatious luxury. Since the sixteenth century, portraits of these figures were quite customary, although it was Velázquez who explored this genre with singular mastery. The date generally attributed to this extraordinary portrait indicates that the model might be Bartolillo, a dwarf whose presence in the Palace is documented between 1621 and 1626.

 Joos de Momper
(1564 – 1635)
 

Joos de Momper the Younger or Joost de Momper the Younger was a Flemish landscape painter active in Antwerp between the late 16th century and the early 17th century. Brueghel's influence is clearly evident in many of de Momper's paintings. His work is situated at the transition from late 16th-century Mannerism to the greater realism in landscape painting that developed in the early 17th century. He achieved considerable success during his lifetime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joos_de_Momper

Landscape of the Ocean and the Sea
1620
Oil on canvas
174 x 256 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/bb9ba78d-fa58-4364-9337-f7b54cefddb0

 

 

 Jusepe de Ribera
(1591 - 1652)

 

Jusepe de Ribera was a painter and printmaker, who along with Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting. Referring to a series of Ribera exhibitions held in the late 20th century, Philippe de Montebello wrote "If Ribera's status as the undisputed protagonist of Neapolitan painting had ever been in doubt, it was not longer. Indeed, to many it seemed that Ribera emerged from these exhibitions as not simply the greatest Neapolitan artist of his age but one of the outstanding European masters of the seventeenth century. Jusepe de Ribera has also been referred to as José de Ribera, Josep de Ribera, and Lo Spagnoletto ("the Little Spaniard") by his contemporaries, early historians, and biographers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jusepe_de_Ribera

El sueño de José. (Jacob’s dream)
1639
Oil on canvas
179 x 233 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/c84dbc72-af49-4a7c-88df-a66046bc88cd

Georges de La Tour
(1593 - 1652)

 

Georges de La Tour was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_de_La_Tour

Ciego tocando la zanfonía. (Blind Hurdy-Gurdy Player.)
Between 1610 and 1630
Oil on canvas
86 x 62,5 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/33422fcb-a2b9-4a83-b907-e539aaed796d

Titian
(1488 - 1576)
 

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (pronounced [titˈtsjaːno veˈtʃɛlljo]; c. 1488/90 – 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian (/ˈtɪʃən/ TISH-ən), was an Italian (Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, 'from Cadore', taken from his native region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian

Portrait of Charles V of Habsburg (1500-1558) at the Battle of Mühlberg (1547)
1548
Oil on 283 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/carlos-v-en-la-batalla-de-muhlberg/e7c91aaa-b849-478c-a857-0bb58a6b6729

 

Hans Memling
(1430 - 1494)

Hans Memling (also spelled Memlinc) was a painter active in Flanders, who worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. He was born in the Middle Rhine region and probably spent his childhood in Mainz. He moved to the Netherlands and spent time in the Brussels workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. He was subsequently made a citizen of Bruges in 1465, where he became one of the leading artists, running a large workshop, which painted religious works that often incorporated donor portraits of his wealthy patrons. Memling's patrons included burghers (bankers, merchants, and politicians), clergymen, and aristocrats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Memling

Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi
1470 - 1472
Oil on panel
95 x 271cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/triptych-of-the-adoration-of-the-magi/0efd3706-0f54-4a23-87e3-dc8cd930e85a

 

 Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry
(1828 - 1886)

Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry was a French painter born in 1828 in La Roche-sur-Yon in the Vendée. He studied art under Michel Martin Drolling and enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts in 1845. He won the Prix de Rome in 1850 for his picture of Zenobia found on the banks of the Araxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul-Jacques-Aimé_Baudry

The Pearl and the Wave
Ca. 1862
Oil on canvas
83,5 x 187 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/la-perla-y-la-ola/51f1fd9f-19bb-4d4d-9d40-94a49bdba38d

Carlos de Haes
(1829 - 1898)
 

Carlos Sebastián Pedro Hubert de Haes was a Spanish painter from Belgium. He was noted for the Realism in his landscapes, and was considered to be the "first contemporary Spanish artist able to capture something of a particularly Spanish 'essence' in his work". He was cited along with Jenaro Perez Villaamil and Aureliano de Beruete as one of the three Spanish grand masters of landscape painting, the latter of which was his pupil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_de_Haes

La canal de Mancorbo en los Picos de Europa
1876
Oil on canvas
168 x 123 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-mancorbo-pass-in-picos-de-europa/f1ffd402-ad09-40f5-82e6-5fe0929bddb1

Edwin Hayes
(1819 - 1904)

Edwin Hayes, R.I. (1819–1904) was an English and Irish marine artist who painted in oil and watercolours. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hayes

Seascape Marina
1876
Oil on canvas
92 by 153cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/marina/28db3f22-c334-4405-af25-336fdb05143c

Joachim Patinir
(1480 - 1524)

Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market in the Low Countries. Patinir was a pioneer of landscape as an independent genre and he was the first Flemish painter to regard himself primarily as a landscape painter. He effectively invented the world landscape, a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes which is Patinir's important contribution to Western art. His work marks an important stage in the development of the representation of perspective in landscape painting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Patinir

Landscape with St Jerome
1515–1519
oil on panel
74 × 91 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/116e5d91-b895-48cf-9cf1-3bd5bf17f983

Osias Beert

(1580 - 1623)

 

Osias Beert or Osias Beert the Elder was a Flemish painter active in Antwerp who played an important role in the early development of flower and "breakfast"-type still lifes as independent genres in Northern European art. He has been recognized as one of the most influential artists of the earliest generation of still life painters in Flanders. He contributed in particular to the development of still lifes placed on table tops featuring festive culinary delights as well as of sumptuous floral bouquets, typically displayed in Wan Li vases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osias_Beert

 

 

Still Life with Oysters

First half of the 17th century

Oil on panel

43 x 54 cm

Museo del Prado

https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/771a70d2-a862-423f-ba40-427823810153

 

 Luis Egidio Meléndez
(1716 - 1780)

Luis Egidio Meléndez was a Spanish painter. Though he received little acclaim during his lifetime and died in poverty, Meléndez is recognized as the greatest Spanish still-life painter of the 18th century. His mastery of composition and light, and remarkable ability to convey the volume and texture of individual objects enabled him to transform the most mundane of kitchen fare into powerful images.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Egidio_Meléndez

Still Life with Oysters, Garlic, Eggs, Pot and Pan
1772
Oil on canvas
41 x 62 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/still-life-with-oysters-garlic-eggs-pot-and-pan/16a1d9f8-bef6-4fdb-868c-5b70e311e645

Caravaggio
(1571 - 1610)

 

Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio

David with the Head of Goliath
1600
Oil on Canvas
110,4 x 91,3 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/david-with-the-head-of-goliath/c3895900-73d4-4257-97fb-240e3aaf0402?searchid=afc30dc1-8a54-3172-6278-756c97919575

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
(c. 1525–1530 – 9 September 1569)
 

Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genre painting); he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder

The Triumph of Death
1562-1563
Oil on panel
117 x 162 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-triumph-of-death/d3d82b0b-9bf2-4082-ab04-66ed53196ccc

 

 

Raphael
(1483 - 1520)
 

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael  was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael

Portrait of a Cardinal
1510 - 1511
Oil on panel
79 x 61 cm.
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/4c01eae6-feed-4135-88d9-6736140212fb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Cardinal_(Raphael)

 

 

 El Greco

(1541 - 1614)

Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krḗs), which means Cretan. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings, such as View of Toledo and Opening of the Fifth Seal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco

El caballero de la mano en el pecho (The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest)
1583
Oil on canvas
81 x 66 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/9cb73bdf-66e8-4826-a79c-5de2b15a1da6

Peter Paul Rubens
(1577 - 1640)

 

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens

La_adoración_de_los_Reyes_Magos  (Adoration of the Magi )
Between 1628 and 1629
Oil on panel
355,5 x 493 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/wd/b6440da1-0c0c-4ead-84b7-f5a017e2fd17

 

The painting had to be cut from its frame with a knife, rolled up and thrown out of a window during a fire at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid in 1734 - the cuts and small blisters in the paint (caused by exposure to the heat of the fire) are still visible, though it was otherwise undamaged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoration_of_the_Magi_(Rubens,_Madrid 

Bartolomé Bermejo
(c. 1440 – c.1501)

Bartolomé Bermejo  was a Spanish painter who adopted Flemish painting techniques and conventions. Born in Cordoba, he is known for his work in the Crown of Aragon, including the Principality of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Valencia. His real name was Bartolomé de Cárdenas: the name Bermejo, which means auburn in Spanish, possibly relates to his hair colour. Bermejo may relate also to his name, Cardenas; Cardeno means purplish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_Bermejo

Santo Domingo de Silos entronizado como obispo (Saint Dominic of Silos enthroned as a Bishop)
between circa 1474 and circa 1477
Oil on panel
242 x 130 cm
Museo del Prado
https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/saint-dominic-of-silos-enthroned-as-a-bishop/f4cd7ad1-cc50-48fe-86f5-71dfe6672db1