Madrid,
Yesterday the Prado Museum announced its exhibition program for the year we have just launched; In the coming months he will dedicate monographic exhibitions to three very significant artists from his collection: El Greco, Veronese and Anton Rafael Mengs and these exhibitions will be completed with the presentation of “So far, so close. Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain”, a montage that will study the influence of the Virgin of Guadalupe on art on both sides of the ocean, and another exhibition on the contemporary sculptor Juan Muñoz, who paid close attention to Velázquez and Goya.
The first proposal to open, on February 18, will be “El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo”, with Leticia Ruiz as curator. It will bring together, for the first time since its dispersion in 1830, most of the works that the Cretan carried out between 1577 and 1579 for that Toledo monastery, which was his main commission until then. It included an altarpiece structure for the main altar and two side altarpieces, whose canvases are scattered today; Thanks to an agreement with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Assumption of the Virgin It will return to the Prado after more than a century and will be exhibited alongside pieces preserved in the center’s collection and others from the side altarpiece guarded by the church itself and in different collections.
From May 27 we will be able to visit “Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)”, curated by Miguel Falomir and Enrico Maria dal Pozzolo, professor at the Università degli Studi di Verona. This anthology will be the culmination of the process of study and re-evaluation of the Prado’s collection of Venetian Renaissance painting, one of the most significant in the world, after the previous exhibitions “The Bassano in the Spain of the Golden Age” (2001), “ Tiziano” (2003), “Tintoretto” (2007) and “Lorenzo Lotto. Portraits” (2018). We must also take into account the high influence of the artist in Spain and in the Golden Age, when he was highly valued by monarchs and collectors.
The route will focus on your creative process and your workshop direction, your ability as capobotegasurpassing even contemporary masters such as Titian or Tintoretto, and his ability to represent the aspirations of the Venetian elites.

In summer “So far, so close” will be presented at the Prado. Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain”, which will have as curators Jaime Cuadriello, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and researcher at the Institute of Aesthetic Research of Mexico, and Paula Mues, professor at the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of that country.
You will study how the image of this Virgin spread massively from New Spain between 1650 and 1790, becoming a fundamental religious symbol in Spain, Italy, the Philippines and Latin America. It was considered a miraculous image and was the most reproduced and copied by New Spain authors, associated with the idea of a “revealed icon.” It will also be analyzed its circulation in our country, the impulse of the cult in the Modern Age, the links between the Virgin of Guadalupe of Extremadura and the Mexican one and the role of artists in its dissemination.

Already in November, Juan Muñoz will arrive at various spaces of the Museum with the help of Vicente Todolí. This sculptor continually dialogued with the history of art and had the Renaissance and the Baroque among his references. The Prado was, therefore, one of his main sources of inspiration, from Parmigianino to Goya, and he focused above all on theatricality, illusionism and architecture as expressive resources. During his stay in Rome, he absorbed the teachings of Borromini, Bernini and Piranesi, but his relationship with Velázquez and Goya would be essential: both in his works starring figures with dwarfism and in his interest in capturing fleeting moments in time, with echoes of the Sevillian; as in his treatment of the fine line between humor and violence, in allusion to the Aragonese.
In the same month, “Anton Raphael Mengs” will inaugurate the Prado. The greatest painter of the 18th century”, by Andrés Úbeda and Javier Jordán de Urríes, curator of National Heritage. It will be the largest exhibition of the neoclassical artist so far and will consist of 150 works, including watercolors, pastels, drawings, oil paintings, the fresco Jupiter and Ganymedearrived from Rome, sculptures, medals and manuscripts. His ties with Rafael, Correggio and Pompeo Batoni will be raised.

In addition, the art gallery will launch the third edition of the “The Prado in Feminine” itinerary, which will pay attention to the legacy of the artistic promoters who in the 18th century played a crucial role in the formation of the Prado collections, with Isabel de Farnesio standing out. ; and sculpture will continue to gain presence in the permanent exhibition, with the display of new acquisitions of polychrome sculpture and the relocation of neoclassical pieces to the Jerónimos Cloister.
On the other hand, the third edition of the international writers’ residency “Write the Prado”, a joint initiative with the Loewe Foundation and Granta in Spanish, will invite the British Helen Oyeyemi, recognized for her lyrical prose with an experimental approach, and Mathias Énard, French author winner of the Goncourt Prize for Compass; and the Pérez-Llorca Lecture and the Prado Chair will be given, respectively, by Robert Lane Fox, British historian, academic and writer specialized in the history of classical antiquity, and Astrid Schmidt-Bukhardt, German art historian and academic. who has investigated genealogical diagrams and their relationship with the history of art.
