The Prado Museum of Madrid Through the Eyes of a Child
For anyone walking into the Prado Museum for the first time, this can be a bit of an overwhelming experience, as the Prado is known to be the largest gallery of art in the world. Although the museum houses drawings, rare coins and sculptures, it is the collection of paintings housed here that has gained the museum fame on a worldwide level. The curators manage almost nine thousand paintings, only showing about two thousand at a time due to lack of wall space.
Many art lovers will joke, saying that the paintings kept in storage at the Prado, are better than the works hanging in the galleries of some of the finest museums in the rest of the world. I traveled to the Prado in Madrid with my grandmother when I was just a little girl, and it was there I decided once and for all, at the tender age of seven, that I would too, become a painter. I was not overwhelmed, as I do believe children have a way of feeling normal when the adults are in overwhelming situations, I was in a colorful and heavenly world, and I wanted to make sure that I lived in that kind of world for the rest of my life. My grandmother was an experienced traveler, skilled in the ways of finding great deals on airline tickets, and rates on rooms, such as these. She made it her life’s mission to see the world, and she always took me along with her on that mission.
We had many experiences on our trip to Madrid, but the Prado was by far one of the few I remember every detail of, now so many years later. The names of the artists became characters in my brain, as when I would later have “tea parties” the collection of dolls around my table would be called,Velázquez, Goya, Raphael, and Picasso. Picasso always received the most cookies, and to this day remains to be one of my favorite masters of all time. I have not made it back to the Prado Museum as an adult, but I am looking forward to the day when I can walk through the halls once again, with the eyes of a child, filled with love and filled with wonder.
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