Spanish royal collection
The Spanish royal collection of art was almost entirely built up by the monarchs of the Habsburg family who ruled Spain from 1516 to 1700, and then the Bourbons. They included a number of kings with a serious interest in the arts, who were patrons of a series of major artists: Charles V and Philip II were patrons of Titian, Philip IV appointed Velázquez as court painter, and Goya had a similar role at the court of Charles IV.
The royal family were the most important patrons of Spanish art throughout this period, although some important artists including El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, and Zurbaran were little patronised. Foreign artists were often imported, although even in the 16th century the most successful were often reluctant to go to Spain, partly because they feared they would never be allowed to leave. In addition, at various periods, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, the monarchs bought paintings abroad on a significant scale, especially in Italy, but also the Spanish Netherlands and France. In early periods the scattered Spanish possessions included the important artistic centres of Milan, Naples, and the Low Countries.
With the loss of the Low Countries as a result of the Peace of Utrecht, the Spanish crown developed tapestry manufacture in Madrid to avoid the need for imports of these luxury items. As a young man, Goya executed a number of tapestry designs for use in the royal palaces. Royal patronage was also used to develop other arts and crafts in Spain in the 18th century, for example the Real Fábrica de Cristales de La Granja produced luxury glass products. However, there was still interest in artists who were based abroad. An interesting example of foreign art works entering the royal collection is Charles III's intervention to acquire items from a captured British ship, the Westmorland, which was sailing from Italy with the purchases of British aristocrats on the Grand Tour.
The enormous collections have been significantly reduced by a series of fires, losses in the Napoleonic Wars and to a lesser extent the Spanish Civil War, and diplomatic gifts. The collections have passed to public ownership, and a large number are on display at various locations. Although the collection is rightly most famous for its paintings, with the Prado in Madrid holding the main collection, there are large holdings of sculpture, and most forms of the decorative arts. What is probably the world's finest collection of Renaissance Flemish tapestries is mostly displayed at the Palace of La Granja, and the collection of plate armour in the Armoury in the Royal Palace, Madrid is only rivalled by its equivalent in Vienna.
History
Charles V
Few Spanish paintings are recorded in the collection that were owned before the Habsburg reigns. The c. 300 paintings owned by Isabella I of Castile were dispersed in an auction after her death, with the paintings fetching very low prices compared to the many tapestries or her jewels and even clothes. For example, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch was valued at 170 maravedis, but a tapestry of Lazarus at 150,000. Some pieces were bought by the family and a selection was placed on permanent display at her tomb in the Royal Chapel of Granada, but her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon was mainly interested in the tapestries, paying 524,072 for two sets of four each, and buying the Lazarus piece at a lower price. Isabella's son-in-law Philip the Handsome bought the Polyptych of Isabella of Castille a set of small religious paintings by Juan de Flandes that have mostly remained in the royal collection. Juan was court painter for Isabella I of Castile from 1496, but all of his paintings in the Prado collection were acquired in the 20th century,The collection includes those parts taken to Spain in the 16th century of the collection of the Valois Dukes of Bugundy, whose heir was Charles V. The Early Netherlandish paintings were further reinforced in 1558 on the death of Charles V's sister, Mary of Hungary, shortly after her retirement as governor of the Netherlands. She was a keen collector whose heir was Philip II. Her legacy included the Deposition of Christ by Rogier van der Weyden, by then over a century old. She also had two dozen Titians. Charles V was also the heir of his great-aunt Margaret of Austria, also governor of the Netherlands and a keen collector, though mostly of contemporary Netherlandish paintings. Her collection included the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, which left the collection in the Napoleonic Wars and is now in the National Gallery, London.
All of these additions from the Low Countries were probably valued more for their tapestries than their paintings. Charles V spent more on tapestries than paintings, and commissioned them throughout his life, continuing the family tradition, and reflecting common royal preferences at the time.
Image:Busto de Carlos V.jpg|thumb|right|280px|Leone Leoni, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Museo del Prado
The largely German collections of Charles' grandfather Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and the earlier Habsburgs mostly remained in Austria and Germany when in 1556 Charles V abdicated and divided his enormous realms between his brother, who became Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his son Philip, who received Spain, the Netherlands and the Habsburg possessions in Italy. They are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and elsewhere.
Charles V was also a keen and discriminating collector, and his relentless travelling made him aware of the diversity of Renaissance art, above all that of Italy. He was greatly impressed by a Titian portrait of the Duke of Mantua and his dog, and arranged for Titian to paint him, in Bologna in 1532, full-length and also with a hound. This was a repetition of a recent portrait by his brother's court painter Jakob Seisenegger, intended as a demonstration piece. This fully won Charles over, and from then on he never posed for any other portrait painter, as Vasari says, despite the difficulties in meeting Titian to pose. His Equestrian Portrait of Charles V set the standard for the genre, influencing later artists such as Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, and Francisco Goya. But the Milan-based sculptor Leone Leoni, assisted by his son Pompeo, occupied from 1546 an equivalent position in sculpture; there are full and half-length bronze portrait sculptures of Charles in the Prado, as well as medals and engraved gems. The Dutch painter Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen was mostly used to record Charles's military victories, especially in designs for large tapestries, and Charles took him on his campaign to Tunis.
Philip II
Charles's son Philip II of Spain was devoted to his father's memory, and probably more interested in art than his father; certainly he commissioned and bought much more, and by the end of his life the collection included some 1,500 paintings, and about 700 tapestries. He took over Charles's key artists, Titian and the Leonis, and commissioned the famous and now dispersed series of mythological paintings known as the poesie, which represent some of his finest late works. Of these six or seven paintings, only one at most of the prime versions remained in the collection until transfer to the Prado; five are now in the United Kingdom, and one in the United States.In 1561 Philip established Madrid as the capital of Spain, something his father had planned but never implemented. He also began to construct a massive monument to his father and the other Spanish Habsburgs at El Escorial, whose building and decoration was to be the major artistic project of his reign.
Philip III
, who reigned from 1598 to 1621, continued the output of royal portraits, but otherwise was not greatly interested in art. Arguably, his reign was in any case an unremarkable period in Spanish painting. He commissioned an equestrian statue of himself by Giambologna, who did not visit Spain in person. Rubens came as an ambassador, and painted his Valido the Duke of Lerma, but not the royal family.Philip IV
In great contrast to his father, the long reign of Philip IV of Spain saw great personal involvement by the monarch in artistic patronage. Diego Velázquez was brought to the King's attention when still young, after the death of Rodrigo de Villandrando in 1622, and remained in royal service for the rest of his life, also progressing through the hierarchy of courtiers. Philip enjoyed his company, and often came to see him paint. The very informal Las Meninas show the artist painting the King and Queen Mariana, with their daughter watching.Velázquez was twice given permission to visit Italy, in 1629-30 and 1649–51. On the second visit he was used as an agent of the King to buy art, which he did on a large scale, with excellent judgement.
Charles II
's reign saw Spain's decline become evident. Royal patronage of official portraits continued, but there was relatively little other than that, and the receipt of diplomatic gifts from other monarchs. Court painters included Juan Carreño de Miranda.Philip V and Ferdinand VI
After Charles' death, the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1715 disrupted royal patronage, especially in the early years. The new king, Philip V, was a young French prince, whose reign lasted, with a brief interruption, from 1700 to 1746. French portrait painters were now used heavily, including Jean Ranc and Louis-Michel van Loo, who replaced Ranc as the main court portraitist from 1736, and native Spanish painters like Miguel Jacinto Meléndez needed to adjust their style.Van Loo remained in place in the reign of Philip's son Ferdinand VI, until he returned to Paris in 1753. From 1753 to 1761 Italian Rococo artist Corrado Giaquinto spent time in Madrid and was patronised by King Ferdinand.
Charles III
Reigning over Spain from 1759 to 1788, Charles III was considerably more capable and dynamic than his predecessors for a century before. He had also trained in painting and etching when young and continued to etch in later life. He twice persuaded Anton Raphael Mengs, the leading painter of Neoclassicism, the avant-garde movement of the day to leave Rome to visit Spain, which successful artists were traditionally reluctant to do. As well as a large ceiling in the Royal Palace of Madrid, several portraits of the royal family remain in the collection.Mengs was a bitter rival of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, from a generation earlier. He spent his last years in Madrid, from 1761 to 1770, painting three ceilings in the Royal Palace, and a set of paintings for a church, which were quickly replaced by works by Mengs after court intrigues, apparently reflecting the King's taste. One, The Immaculate Conception reached the Prado in 1827.
Francisco Bayeu y Subías was an assistant to and protege of Mengs from 1763, who was given a job designing for the Royal Tapestry Factory the same year, becoming director in 1777. Francisco Goya had been a pupil of Mengs in the 1760s, but they had not got on. After a trip to Italy he got on much better with Bayeu, and in 1773 married his sister Josefa. When he became director Bayeu employed Goya to design tapestries, with about 50 of his painted cartoons remaining in the collection, as well as most of the tapestries made from them.
In the 1780s Goya began to paint portraits of the court, including the King. He began with a portrait of José Moñino, 1st Count of Floridablanca, Charles's chief minister, in 1783, and then painted many of the family of Charles's brother Infante Luis of Spain. In 1786 he was made a salaried court painter.