Museums of Madrid I. [antikvár]

TO THE READER Our gratitude and congratulations, dear Reader, upon acquiring this little book. Our gratitude needs no explanation, since it is natural to be grateful for your attention to our effort and work. But perhaps our reason for congratulating you should be clarified. A museum guide can be used to make your visit more pleasant and valuable, but it is not unreasonable to assume that it may be irrelevant when your attention can be captured instead by the actual masterpiece, and not its reproduction or somé detail about its author. Virtually, the function and benefit of a book such as this should not be limited to being an aid during your visit; rather, it should help you remenber what you have seen. And it has the further advantage that a more comfortable consultation or review outside the museum can induce a later visit, a third, or many more. Let us make one point clear; a guidebook is not a catalogue, but rather an anthology. Here we will not mention -as it is impossible- the 3,100 paintings which theoretically (many are displayed in provinciai museums) make up the inventory of the Prado Museum. Even many of those which in all justice should be held in great esteem are neither mentioned nor reproduced here. The reason is obvious. Those paintings deserving of the very highest praise in other art galleries must necessarily take second place in the Prado Museum, where works considered excellent by all critics and visitors are so amazingly abundant. Nevertheless, we will try not to let the pieces of particular skill and inspiration dazzle us to the point that we eliminate many others. This is a task as diffícult as it is risky, considering the quantity and quality of the works exhibited. But let us forget these elusive words, difficulty, and risk, and exchange them for others - brightness, and solemnity. Because bright will be the moment, and solemn, when the visitor, perhaps you, enters the Prado Museum for the first time.