(prä'dō, Span. prä'thō) , national Spanish museum of painting and sculpture, Madrid, one of the finest in Europe. Situated on the Paseo del Prado, it was begun by Juan de Villanueva in 1785 for Charles III, as a museum of natural history, and finished under Ferdinand VII; the inaugural ceremony took place in 1819, when the collection consisted entirely of Spanish paintings. It was maintained by the royal family and called the Royal Museum until 1868, when it became national property. The Spanish, Flemish, and Venetian schools are particularly well represented. There are outstanding masterpieces of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rubens, Van Dyck, Dürer, Brueghel, and Hieronymus Bosch, and Velázquez, El Greco, Ribera, and Goya, nowhere else to be seen to such advantage. In 1894 contemporary paintings in the museum were transferred to the Patrimonio Nacional.

Bibliography

See H. B. Wehle, Great Paintings from the Prado Museum, with a foreword by F. J. Sánchez Cantón (1963); A. E. Sanches, The Prado (1987).