‘Nine hours,’ boasted my friend the curator about his trip to the Prado. Nine! Two hours is my upper limit in a gallery. After that I’m gasping for the tea room and gift shop. Knowing my lack of stamina, my own trip to the Prado was focused: just Velázquez and Goya. Then lunch. And a bit of Rubens, because that large room of lovely bottoms is so ‘Hello, sailor!’ it would be rude not to look.
It helps to have a mind’s gallery of Diego Velázquez portraits while reading Amy Sackville’s novel Painter to the King. Not essential, but definitely enriching. If you haven’t a Madrid mini-break booked, have a nose around the Prado collection online. Sadly, you can’t visit El Buon Retiro, Felipe IV’s pleasure palace outside the city, now mostly ruined and demolished. ‘Dust veils everything,’ writes Sackville, as workmen lay the foundations; ‘these buildings coming out of it like dreams in the desert.’
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