The stories behind the paintings

In February 1814, with Napoleon's armies retreating and a king about to reclaim his throne, Spain's provisional government asked an aging court painter to immortalize the day ordinary Madrileños first said no to an empire. Francisco de Goya delivered one of the most devastating images of war ever painted. Then the government whose victory it was supposed to celebrate put it in storage — and left it there for most of the century. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) Date: 1814 Medium: Oil on canvas (268 × 347 cm) Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Commissioned by Spain's provisional government to honor the 1808 uprising against Napoleon — then kept out of public view for roughly three decades, uncatalogued by the Prado until 1872. Francisco de Goya, The Third of May 1808 , 1814. Oil on canvas, 268 × 347 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Madrid Says No On May 2, 1808, Madrid rioted. Napoleon had mar...

Francisco de Goya had painted for kings. Then he bought a house outside Madrid, went deaf to the court, and covered the walls with images he never meant for a salon. The Quinta del Sordo — the House of the Deaf Man — is where the Black Paintings begin: Saturn in the dining room, a witches’ sabbath in the gloom, and a painter who stopped decorating power and started painting what power left behind. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) Theme: The Quinta del Sordo and the Black Paintings Key works in this guide: Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1820–23); Witches’ Sabbath / related witch scenes; earlier Witches’ Flight (1798) Collection today: Museo del Prado, Madrid (transferred from the house walls) Notable fact: Painted in oil directly on the plaster of his own home, then later transferred to canvas Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1820–23). Museo del Prado, Madrid — once on the walls of the Qu...

In the summer of 1656, Diego Velázquez painted himself at work: standing before an enormous canvas in a high-ceilinged room of Madrid's Real Alcázar, brush in one hand, palette in the other, pausing mid-stroke to look out at whoever has just walked in. Everyone in the room is looking the same way — the five-year-old Infanta Margarita Theresa, her maids of honour, a dwarf, a mastiff, a chaperone in the shadows. What they're all looking at is a small, blurred mirror on the back wall, reflecting two figures who aren't otherwise in the room at all: King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria. The question that has occupied art historians for more than three centuries is disarmingly simple. Who, exactly, is Velázquez painting? Quick facts Artist: Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) Date: 1656 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Velázquez wasn't yet a knight of the Order of Santiago when he painted this — the red cross on his chest was added...

Three witches haul a naked body through the night air while a man below covers his ears - or tries not to hear the spell. Francisco de Goya's Witches' Flight (1797-1798) - Vuelo de Brujas - belongs to a set of witchcraft pictures in which superstition, fear, and satire share the same dark sky. Magic here is not costume glamour; it is a social nightmare with lift. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) Date: 1797-1798 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Part of a group of six witchcraft-themed works; Goya mixes Enlightenment scorn with images that still feel sincerely terrifying Francisco de Goya, Witches' Flight (Vuelo de Brujas) , 1797-1798. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Enlightenment Light, Midnight Subject Late eighteenth-century Spain was full of arguments about reason and superstition. Goya paints witches who look absurd and dangerous at once. Pointed hats, ritual gestures, and a levitated victim could be moc...

Two nudes cut across a dark ground like dancers who forgot the music is a death sentence. Atalanta stoops for a golden apple; Hippomenes twists away mid-stride. Guido Reni's Atalanta and Hippomenes (c. 1618-1619, Prado version) freezes the cheat that wins a marriage race - desire, distraction, and classical bodies under Baroque pressure. Quick facts Artist: Guido Reni (1575-1642) Date: c. 1618-1619 (Prado version; related version in Capodimonte, Naples) Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Long misattributed as a copy; confirmed as Reni's original at the Prado in 1963 after a turbulent Spanish provenance Guido Reni, Atalanta and Hippomenes , c. 1618-1619. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The Myth in One Diagonal Atalanta vowed to marry only the man who could outrun her; losers died. Aphrodite handed Hippomenes golden apples to toss mid-race. Reni picks the instant she breaks form to ...

Wet skin, shallow water, and sunlight so sharp it turns a child's shoulder into a small white flame. Joaquin Sorolla's Children on the Beach (1910) - also known as Ninos en la playa - does not narrate a story so much as pour Mediterranean noon onto canvas. Three boys sprawl and wade in the shallows; the sea is broken light; childhood is a weather condition. Quick facts Artist: Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923) Date: 1910 Medium: Oil on canvas (approx. 118 x 185 cm) Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Gifted by Sorolla to Spain's Museum of Modern Art in 1919; later entered the Prado Joaquin Sorolla, Children on the Beach (Ninos en la playa) , 1910. Museo del Prado, Madrid. The Painter of Light, Literally Sorolla earned the nickname by treating Valencia's coast as a laboratory of reflections. Here water is not a flat blue field; it is a skin of glitter over sand. Flesh picks up cool greens and warm pinks from what surrounds it. The brush stays o...

Wide white eyes. A naked giant stuffs a limp, bloody torso into his mouth while his hands dig into the back like meat hooks. In Francisco de Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1819-1823), myth is not politely retold. It is chewed in the dark. Quick facts Artist: Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) Date: c. 1819-1823 Medium: Oil mural transferred to canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: One of the Black Paintings from Quinta del Sordo; moved to canvas in 1874 and now at the Prado Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son , c. 1819-1823. Oil mural transferred to canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid. From House Wall to Museum Horror The image began as a mural in Quinta del Sordo, the house Goya bought outside Madrid in 1819. Together with the other Black Paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1874 and later entered the Prado. The private wall became public nightmare: thick paint, stark light, and a body that reads less like a child than an indistinct, ...

On the left, a pale, half-dressed Bacchus crowns a kneeling man with vine leaves. On the right, rough Spanish faces grin out at you with cups raised, as if the god had wandered into a Madrid tavern and decided to stay. In Diego Velazquez's The Triumph of Bacchus - better known as Los Borrachos (c. 1628-1629) - classical myth and street life share one canvas and refuse to apologize. Quick facts Artist: Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) Date: c. 1628-1629 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: Commissioned by Philip IV for 100 ducats; painted just before Velazquez's first trip to Italy Diego Velazquez, The Triumph of Bacchus (Los Borrachos) , c. 1628-1629. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Two Halves, Two Worlds The painting splits cleanly. Bacchus and the figure behind him wear loose classical drapery and sit in brighter light; their skin reads cooler and more ideal. The drinkers on the right wear contemporary poor men's cl...

Closed, the altarpiece is almost silent: a pale globe floating in grey water under God's word. Open it, and the silence explodes. Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490-1510) is a triptych that moves from Creation to a carnival of bodies to a machine of punishment - paradise, pleasure, and hell laid out like a single argument about what humans do with freedom. Quick facts Artist: Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) Date: c. 1490-1510 Medium: Oil on oak panel (triptych, approx. 220 x 389 cm open) Collection: Museo del Prado, Madrid Notable fact: When closed, the outer wings show the third day of Creation as a fragile world-sphere; the Latin inscription cites Psalm 33: "Ipse dixit, et facta sunt" Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights , c. 1490-1510. Oil on oak panel. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Public domain. A World Before Colour Shut the wings and you get monochrome Creation: Earth held in a transparent sphere, vegetation with...