The idea of a national gallery to house the royal collections, made up essentially of Spanish works of art, but with some Italian and Flemish paintings as well, thanks to the purchases made on behalf of the Spanish rulers by the viceroys in those countries, emerged in the eighteenth century. We know this from a letter by the Czech painter Anton Mengs dated 1774, in which he also recommended that the “Gallery” be organized along rational lines. In 1810 Joseph Bonaparte decreed the creation of a museum, but it was not until 1814, with the restoration of Ferdinand VII, that the decision was taken to set up the National Palace of Painting, a neoclassical building situated on the central and popular Paseo del Prado. It was called the Royal Museum of Painting of the Prado and was opened to the public in 1819. When Queen Isabella II went into exile in 1868, it was renamed the National Museum. The nucleus of the collection was assembled when Spain became a unitary state, at the end of the fifteenth century. Isabella the Catholic was particularly fond of Flemish art, while Charles V (1516-56) enlarged the collection with works from various national schools. Among his many merits, perhaps the most important was that of having been Titian’s principal and most enthusiastic client.
His son, Philip II (1556-98) continued to collect Titian’s works, having pictures like the Venus and Adonis and the artist’s Self-Portrait sent to Spain. The Prado received new impetus in the seventeenth century, under Philip IV. In fact the king had the good fortune to acquire many of the masterpieces in the collection of Charles I of England and the wisdom to appoint one of the masters of Spanish art, Diego Velázquez, as court painter. The Prado contains a rich collection of his works. It was Velázquez who was sent to Italy by the king to acquire Italian masterpieces.
At the end of the eighteenth century Francisco Goya was appointed court artist by Charles IV. Acquisitions continued right through the nineteenth century, thanks in part to Queen Isabella II, who left her estate to the country when she went into exile. At the beginning of the century work began on enlarging the museum structure to make room for the whole of the huge collection, amassed over centuries of enthusiastic collecting.
