Madrid, Apr. 28 — The tour of the Prado Museum in Madrid is marked by the visual impact of a large-format work, Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, which today can be surpassed.
Under this idea, the Prado inaugurates the exhibition format "One work, one story," with The Year of Hunger in Madrid, by José Aparicio, measuring 315 x 437 cm. Las Meninas (1656) measures 320.5 cm high by 281.5 cm wide.
The Year of Hunger in Madrid is a work barely known by the general public. However, it captured all eyes in its day at the museum, where it came to eclipse the figures of Francisco de Goya and José de Madrazo during the reign of Fernando VII.
Miguel Falomir, director of the Prado Museum, commented that "the objective is to invite the viewer to contemplate a work that, beyond its aesthetic merits, helps us reflect on aspects of art history that often go unnoticed."
Acclaimed as a great artistic milestone of its time, reproduced in prints, songs, and poems, this history painting also served as a political artifact.
The reconstruction of its original location in the Prado Museum in 1819, converted into one of its main icons, reveals the ideological toll imposed by the absolutism of Fernando VII, even above Las Meninas at that time.
According to the source, the exhibition analyzes, until September 13 in room 66 of the Villanueva building, the rise and fall of a national glory that went from being the most powerful visual metaphor of 19th-century Spain to becoming a mere local anecdote.
