3. The Art Museums

On our last day in Madrid we headed to two of the famous Art Museums: the Prado and the Reina Sofia. Not having acquired a map at the entrance of the Prado - so as to easily locate famous masterpieces - we defaulted to covering the entire Prado collection, which fitted with our perspective on art: if we like it we like it, whether it’s famous or not. There were only two main floors however these still provided us with a marathon. But we reminded ourselves - we trained for this by walking for nearly forty days in Turkey! Compared with the Louvre in Paris, the Prado was a far more enjoyable experience: the pieces of art weren’t crammed in with shoehorns; there was a fraction of the crowd; there was less to see hence easier to enjoy. Once the Prado marathon was completed, we compiled our list of really weird art fixations that have multiple iterations:

• the insane queen
• the Virgin Mary squirting breast milk to Saint Bernard 
• obese young children (actually painted simply because of their size).

The Miraculous Lactation of St Bernard
Alonso Cano, 1650

Doña Juana “la Loca” by Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, 1877

         

After a lunchtime break, we resolutely set out for the Reina Sofia museum, but acquired a map on entry and were more selective in our viewing. There were a lot of pieces by Picasso and we did have to conclude that Picasso’s work is tricky to grasp. However, the artwork of note was Picasso’s Guernica - the famous anti-war expression of suffering. When pressed to explain the elements in Guernica, Picasso said “...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse..” Thus we were edified. And it was time to head to Sevilla.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica commissioned during the Spanish Civil War