If you visit Madrid be sure to check out some of the world's most important art museums. I went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Here there is not only Picasso's amazing Guernica but beside it there area rooms filled with sketches and studies showing how the work evolved. Other artists on exhibit are Dali, Miro and more Picasso. Unfortunately I did not make it to the Museo Thyssen-Bonemisza or to the local galleries (next time!) but I couldn't miss the Museo Nacional del Prado.
What an incredible collection of work. The Velazquez room, Bosch, the Durer self portrait and the upstairs Goya court paintings and the downstairs black period were some of the highlights for me. Other artists are exhibition include Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Titian and lots of El Greco.
If you won't be visiting Madrid anytime soon, download Google Earth, mix yourself a mojito and see the Prado masterpieces in amazing detail.
In Google Earth go to the 'Fly to' search field and enter Museo Prado Masterpieces. On the map a white square marker is shown. Click that to get art zooming. Written on the link is the following:
We present a virtual tour of fourteen masterpieces from the Museo Nacional del Prado, displayed in ultra high resolution, enabling you to see details of the paintings that have never been seen before. Thanks to the high resolution of the digital images, you can view the whole painting or zoom in on a small fragment. Given the plethora of masterpieces housed at the Museum, choosing which works to include was no easy task but this selection represents the best of the collection.
