Prado Madrid (Great museums of the world)

Within these pages – in 125 magnificent new
color photographs are the art treasures of Spain, amassed for their palaces by the spanish kings and now housed in that “perfect” museum
the prado.
as in the Prado itself, are the surpassing splendors of the royal collections the dazzling assemblage of master paintings of the 15th to 18th centuries-shown in all their beauty, and with full historical and critical commentary. Marvelous in quality, they range from early flemish art the luminous, architectural depictions of sacred drama preferred by queen Isabella the Catholic to the opulence of Titian, first brought to Spain by his great patron, Charles V; from the eccentricities of Hieronymus Bosch and those modern, daring works (of Paolo Veronese, Tintoretto and el greco) that fascinated Philip II to the Rubens’ and Raphaels of Philip IV spain’s greatest collector, friend and patron of Velázquez.
As on a private guided tour of its galleries, the reader will find the greatest of the Prado’s extraordinary possessions. From Flanders: Mem ling’s Adoration of the Magi; Patinir’s landscapes with their Leonardesque perspectives and disturbing figures; the crystalline, erotic vision of Bosch’s Garden of Delights (shown in many de. tails); the mythological creations of Rubens the voluptuous Three Graces, and the bold and sensuous garden of Love.