Madrid,
Photography has been part of various exhibitions at the Prado Museum – more than a gallery, as those in charge always emphasize – but never until now have we been able to visit a monographic exhibition focused on its own collections in this discipline.
Room 60, where the center has been presenting its 19th century collections since 2009, hosts until April “The Prado multiplied: photography as shared memory”, the first of a series of exhibitions that will be curated by Beatriz Sánchez Torija and that will offer us selections of images from the Prado’s historical photography collection, dated from the invention of the camera to the end of the Civil War.
Although this historical photograph has been part of the museum’s collection since the second half of the 19th century, the collection in this area, as such, has not been articulated until the 21st century, especially when in 2004 the center provided a montage to the graphoscope.
The Prado’s photographic collections have 10,000 references (the number of items may be somewhat greater), corresponding to works of art and artists, which have already been digitized and most of which can be consulted online. In this first exhibition in which they are presented to us, we can see almost fifty representatives of the importance that this technique acquired when documenting pieces from the collections and their rooms in other periods; Hence, they are very relevant especially for those who study museographic practices of the past and present.
The bulk of the Prado’s collection of historical photos corresponds to artistic reproductions, and in their creation very diverse procedures were used that brought their materiality closer to pictorialism: we are referring to albumen, gelatin or charcoal copies, although we will also see photomechanical reproductions in formats that were standardized (business cards), postcards and stereoscopic cards. This wealth of formats refers to the rapid evolution of functions and methods in photography applied to art.
In these nineteenth-century images of the Central Gallery, the Murillo room or the sculpture gallery we can see the past superimposed and variegated arrangement of the pieces, the furniture that was arranged in those rooms at that time, how the heating systems were placed and some presence of employees or the public, fleeting in that, at that time, human presence was not common in this type of photos. These scenes, therefore, have an evident documentary and recording value, but not only of the known: also of the unexpected. Although it is not among the works now shown, that sketch by Murillo of Saint Anne giving a lesson to the Virginstolen and found in Pau.
Although the Prado did not hire photographers until the 1950s, the work of systematically photographing the museum’s works began almost a century earlier: in the 1860s. Given the technical limitations, it was common to have to move the canvases outside to take advantage of natural light; Once the negatives were obtained, the photographers produced positives in standardized formats that could be marketed and circulated, both among a wide public (the democratization of the image was welcome) and among collectors and specialists. We have talked about canvases, but sculptures, drawings and decorative arts were also captured.
Who were those photographers? Juan Laurent and José Lacoste stood out (the latter bought the former’s archive, continued his work and sold his works at the Central Gallery), but also Moreno, Braun, Hanfstaengl and Anderson. They are important names in the dissemination of the museum’s works – almost all of them were in charge of The surrender of Breda by Velázquez -, but they also photographed compositions that do not belong to the Prado, but that were part of national exhibitions or other events, such as the portrait of the Infanta Margarita as a child that is owned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and that traveled to Madrid, in 1899, to commemorate the centenary of the genius of Seville. This last image, a cardboard on a second cardboard support, was commissioned by Clement Braun & Cie. In other cases, they had not yet entered the museum and were in the Trinidad.
When the postcard became widespread at the beginning of the last century and the phototype made it possible to reduce costs, general knowledge of the Prado collections grew, also internationally. This exhibition invites us to contemplate this tool of knowledge as heritage in itself that has changed our way of looking.
Looking to the future, the Prado’s lines of acquisition with regard to photography correspond to artists’ workshops – to delve into their work – and to the architecture of its building and surroundings. And the next sample of this series will arrive in April, and will precisely star creators.
“The Prado multiplied: photography as shared memory”
NATIONAL PRADO MUSEUM
Paseo del Prado, s/n
Madrid
From February 2 to April 5, 2026
