Spanish royal collection

Few Spanish paintings are recorded in the collection that were owned before the Habsburg reigns. The c. 300 paintings owned by Isabella I of Castile (d. 1504) were dispersed in an auction after her death, with the paintings fetching very low prices compared to the many tapestries or her jewels and even clothes. For example, a painting by Hieronymous Bosch was valued at 170 maravedis, but a tapestry of Lazarus at 150,000. Some pieces were bought by the family, but her husband Ferdinand was mainly interested in the tapestries, paying 524,072 for two sets of four each, and buying the Lazarus piece at a lower price. Isabella's son-in-law Philip the Handsome (Charles V's father) bought the Polytych of Isabella of Castille a set of small religious paintings by Juan de Flandes that have mostly remained in the royal collection (now Royal Palace).[5] Juan was court painter for Isabella I of Castile from 1496, but all of his paintings in the Prado collection were acquired in the 20th century,[6]

The collection includes those parts taken to Spain in the 16th century of the collection of the Valois Dukes of Bugundy, whose heir was Charles V. The Early Netherlandish paintings were further reinforced in 1558 on the death of Charles V's sister, Mary of Hungary, shortly after her retirement as governor of the Netherlands. She was a keen collector whose heir was Philip II. Her legacy included the Deposition of Christ by Rogier van der Weyden (Prado), by then over a century old. She also had two dozen Titians.[7] Charles V was also the heir of his great-aunt Margaret of Austria (d. 1530), also governor of the Netherlands and a keen collector, though mostly of contemporary Netherlandish paintings. Her collection included the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, which left the collection in the Napoleonic Wars and is now in the National Gallery, London.

All of these additions from the Low Countries were probably valued more for their tapestries than their paintings. Charles V spent more on tapestries than paintings (like his contemporary Henry VIII), and commissioned them throughout his life, continuing the family tradition, and reflecting common royal preferences at the time.[8]

The largely German collections of Charles' grandfather Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and the earlier Habsburgs mostly remained in Austria and Germany when in 1556 Charles V abdicated and divided his enormous realms between his brother, who became Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his son Philip, who received Spain, the Netherlands and the Habsburg possessions in Italy. They are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and elsewhere.

Charles V was also a keen and discriminating collector, and his relentless travelling made him aware of the diversity of Renaissance art, above all that of Italy.[9] He was greatly impressed by a Titian portrait of the Duke of Mantua and his dog (c. 1529, Prado), and arranged for Titian to paint him, in Bologna in 1532, full-length and also with a hound (Prado). This was a repetition of a recent portrait (Vienna) by his brother's court painter Jakob Seisenegger, intended as a demonstration piece. This fully won Charles over, and from then on he never posed for any other portrait painter, as Vasari says, despite the difficulties in meeting Titian to pose.[10] His Equestrian Portrait of Charles V (Prado) set the standard for the genre, influencing later artists such as Anthony Van Dyck, Rubens, and Goya. But the Milan-based sculptor Leone Leoni, assisted by his son Pompeo, occupied from 1546 an equivalent position in sculpture;[11] there are full and half-length bronze portrait sculptures of Charles in the Prado, as well as medals and engraved gems. The Dutch painter Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen was mostly used to record Charles's military victories, especially in designs for large tapestries, and Charles took him on his campaign to Tunis.[12]

Charles's son Philip II of Spain was devoted to his father's memory,[13] and probably more interested in art than his father; certainly he commissioned and bought much more, and by the end of his life the collection included some 1,500 paintings,[14] and about 700 tapestries.[15] He took over Charles's key artists, Titian and the Leonis, and commissioned the famous and now dispersed series of mythological paintings known as the poesie, which represent some of his finest late works. Of these six or seven paintings, only one at most of the prime versions remained in the collection until transfer to the Prado; five are now in the United Kingdom, and one in the United States.[16]

In 1561 Philip established Madrid as the capital of Spain, something his father had planned but never implemented. He also began to construct a massive monument to his father and the other Spanish Habsburgs at El Escorial, whose building and decoration was to be the major artistic project of his reign.

Many of the finest paintings from the former Spanish royal collection are housed in the Museo del Prado, Spain's national art museum. This institution was opened to the public as an art gallery in 1819 in an initiative associated with Queen Maria Isabel. Having been a royal museum (Museo real de pinturas),[18] the Prado was nationalised in 1868 as a consequence of the deposition of Queen Isabel II.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the Prado, the Hall of Realms, a surviving 17th-century wing of the Buen Retiro Palace, is being redeveloped as part of the campus of the museum. Originally, the Hall housed large paintings from the royal collection. Some of these, such as equestrian portraits of the family of Philip IV, are now in the Prado.[19] While in theory these paintings could be restored to their original location, this would disrupt the layout of key galleries of the Prado,[20] and other uses are currently envisaged for the Hall of Realms.

The Royal Collections Museum

The heritage agency Patrimonio Nacional looks after a number of royal sites in Spain and the art works in them.[21] A new museum in Madrid, the Royal Collections Museum, has been built in the 21st century on a site near the Palacio Real and the Royal Armoury in order to display material from the royal collections which is in the care of Patrimonio Nacional. The Palacio Real contains numerous artworks including frescoes by Tiepolo and a unique set of Stradivarius instruments known as the Stradivarius Palatinos. Once the new museum is open, the three buildings will be complementary in a way arguably comparable to the triangle of art of the Paseo del Prado. The chronological framework of the new museum is from the Middle Ages to the reign of Juan Carlos I.

Patrimonio Nacional has a tradition of organising temporary exhibitions, for example in 2019 it mounted an exhibition about Alfonso XIII's humanitarian intervention in the First World War.[22] It expects to change regularly the exhibits in the new museum.

Some 80 paintings from the former Spanish royal collection are in the Wellington Collection in London. These were being taken from Spain by the French when they were captured by the British army at the Battle of Vitoria. They were subsequently gifted to the British general Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington by Fernando VII, and are kept at Apsley House, the London home of the Dukes of Wellington, where they are mainly on public display.[26]