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Profile - Museo Nacional del Prado
Originally conceived as a Natural History Musem – a role it never came to fulfil – and built on the orders of Charles III, the building which now houses the Museo Nacional del Prado was designed by the architect Juan de Villanueva en 1785. Its purpose would remain unclear until Ferdinand VII, encouraged by his second wife Barbara of Braganza, decided to establish a Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture. The Royal Museum, which would soon change its name to the Museo Nacional de Pintura y Escultura (National Museum of Painting and Sculpture), and subsequently to the Museo Nacional del Prado, first opened to the public in 1819 with 311 paintings from the Spanish Royal Collection. The Royal Collections, the origins of the Prado’s present collection, originated in the sixteenth century under the Emperor Charles V were enriched over the years by all the succeeding Spanish monarchs, both Habsburgs and Bourbons.
The Museum’s collection expanded during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the addition of holdings from other museums (such as the Museo de la Trinidad in 1872, and the former Museo de Arte Moderno in more recent times, along with numerous donations and acquisitions). This fact, together with the corresponding increase in visitor numbers has meant that Villanueva’s original building for the Museo del Prado has undergone numerous expansions (in 1847, 1880, 1893, 1943, 1963 and 1964), to the point where no further work on this historic building was possible. For this reason the Prado has been obliged to look at adjoining sites for its current expansion programme due to be opened during 2007.
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