Valencia is the first city that will enjoy the privilege of simultaneously exhibiting 130 paintings that make up the complete catalogue of the two complementary exhibitions about the Spanish portrait organised by the Prado Museum as pioneers in its programme Prado Itinerante (The Travelling Prado). El retrato español en el Prado. Del Greco a Goya (The Spanish portrait in the Prado: From El Greco to Goya), which will finish its tour of five autonomous regions here, and El retrato español en el Prado. De Goya a Sorolla (The Spanish portrait in the Prado: From Goya to Sorolla), which is presented for the first time with 68 works, can be visited in the San Pio V and in the IVAM, respectively.
The first exhibition, El retrato español. Del Greco a Goya, held in the Museum of Fine Arts has 62 paintings that offer a complete vision of the development of the portrait in Spain from its origins right up to the thresholds of the Contemporary Age, with works by El Greco, Velazquez, Murillo and Goya, amongst others. For its part the second exhibition, De Goya a Sorolla, is made up of 68 paintings that will allow the public to observe with great clarity the reflection of the painters of the 19th century on the great tradition of the Siglo de Oro (Golden Century), principally Velazquez, who is the clearest thread in Spanish portraits between Goya and Sorolla. The selection made, which includes works by Goya, Vicente Lopez, Federico and Raimundo de Madrazo and Sorolla, amongst others, presents the different typologies through outstanding examples of the successive styles that the genre adopted throughout the 19th century: Neoclassicism, Romanticism and the various different orientations of the last third of the century, amongst which one can highlight Realism and Naturalism.
