In the large cities of art are precisely the major museums that characterize them, like the Marmotan, the Gustave Moreau and many others in Paris, or the Philips Collection in Washington, the Van Gogh in Amsterdam, the Vasamuseet in Stockholm, the Frick Collection in New York, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, the Sagrada Familia and Gaudí’s works in Barcelona or the emblematic Wallace Collection in London. That kind of museums and places where to spend between one and three hours to visit nothing tiring, to get to know their particularism art funds with calm and affability. Amazing museums that are rara avis for being small in dimension, but very large in nobility, as well as amazing and admirable for other reasons.

museo_lazarogaldiano
MUSEO LÁZARO GALDIANO. PALACIO FLORIDO. MADRID

 

In Madrid, there is one of the most comprehensive, unique and select from Spain: Museum and Foundation Lázaro Galdiano. Mr. José Lázaro Galdiano was born in Beire (a humble small-town in the Middle Navarre, in the lands of Olite) in 1862 and died in Madrid in 1947. Financial, businessman and intellectual, art collector, bibliophile, publisher and owner together with his spouse of an immense fortune.

The Museum and the Foundation are all a hard to avoid admiring remembrance towards Mr. José Lázaro Galdiano, whose rich art collections can be seen in what was his private house. The Foundation was established one year after his death and in the Palace of Parque Florido (Flowery Park), named like that in honour of his spouse, Mrs. Paula Florido y Toledo (1856-1932) was settled after a deep reform, establishing which is possibly the best private collection of Spain. Display only a part of twelve thousand and five hundred pieces that compose it, in new museology, with refurbished last generation exhibition media and LED lighting.

 

magdalena_penitente
MAGDALENA PENITENTE
FRANCISCO DE GOYA
MUSEO LÁZARO GALDIANO. MADRID

 

This way is the Museum conceived nowadays as a true docent establishment in which be delighted in its vast repertoire. For the potential visitor is recommended to review in advance the Museum website: www.flg.es

European art (Italian, Flemish, German, Dutch, English and French schools), Spanish art (15th-19th centuries) and Cabinet of the Collector (weapons, enamels, ivories, bronze, silver, ceramics, textile, etc.)

 

maja
MAJA SOBRE FONDO OSCURO
Aguafuerte y Aguatinta
FRANCISCO DE GOYA

 

gaulon
RETRATO DEL IMPRESOR GAULON
LITOGRAFÍA
MUSEO LÁZARO GALDIANO. MADRID

 

And as it could not be less in an Spanish collection so numerous and located in Madrid, Goya is very well represented, with eight paintings (Magdalena Penitent, The Flagellants, Unequal Marriage, The Burial Of Christ, The Coven, The Sorcery, The Era, etc.) and with nothing less than 976 stamped works on paper, among which there is to be marked all his graphic work and a more than remarkable representation of lithographed prints, as the known as ‘The Reading’ edited in the Lithographic Establishment of the Hydrographic Deposit of Madrid and four lithographs known as ‘The Bulls of Bordeaux’, as well as the most remarkable portrait of the printer Gaulon, and also the named ‘Maja on Dark Background’, which is part of the series “latest caprichos” made all of them by Goya on Gaulon’s lithographic site during his stay in Bordeaux.

aquelarre_goya
EL AQUELARRE
FRANCISCO DE GOYA
MUSEO LÁZARO GALDIANO. MADRID

 

A visit not to be missed, highly didactic and more than pleasant that the specialist and the attentive visitor should not forget in his artistic journey through the capital city of Spain.

Gonzalo de Diego