El Museo del Prado

On Saturday morning, I got up in the morning and cleaned, watched How I Met Your Mother, cross-stitched for the first time in awhile, and watched some of the U.S.A. vs. Russia hockey game. Then, once Lucia was up and moving we went to the Prado museum. Prado is the most well-known art museum in Madrid and possibly in all of Spain. It has the best collection of Spanish art and is filled with many masterpieces, which got me thinking...what makes a masterpiece? After going to the museum, I didn't figure it out. I really wonder why the masterpieces are considered masterpieces, which is a pretty good thing for me to look into, but I'm just not going to do that right now. Anyway, I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I have included some images of the "masterpieces" that are in the Prado Museum.

El 3 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid
Francisco Goya

Las meninas
Diego Velázquez
The most popular painting in Prado

El caballero de la mano en el pecho
El Greco

El perro
Francisco Goya

The previous painting is from Francisco Goya's Black Paintings. The Black Paintings are paintings that "portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and his bleak outlook on humanity" (Wikipedia). The 14 paintings in this collection were actually murals that were on the walls of Goya's house and in 1874 they were transferred to canvas, which I think is just amazing.

El quitasol
Francisco Goya
I think she looks like Snow White.

El jardín de las delicias
El Bosco

The art at the Prado really isn't the style I like. I definitely like the contemporary art more, but what I really liked about going to the Prado is that I saw the actual pieces of ones that I had seen in Bilbao when I went to the Guggenheim. Let me explain. When I went to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, there were paintings there painted by José Manuel Ballester. His technique of painting was to take masterpieces and omit all of the people. I really liked seeing them in Bilbao, so it was cool to see the masterpieces that he copied from. You can scroll back up to see their counterparts again.

El Palacio Real
José Manuel Ballester

El 3 de mayo
José Manuel Ballester

After visiting the museum, Lucia and I walked back to the bus stop and we ate sandwiches that Lucia had prepared for us. These sandwiches were Nutella sandwiches, which isn't a big deal, but it was because it was my first time ever trying Nutella. I know, I know...a lot of people LOVE Nutella and it's a pretty popular thing, but I just never got around to trying it. My opinion? It's good, but I don't know what the huge fuss is about. But I liked it. Once at home, I spent the rest of my night relaxing, watching more episodes of How I Met Your Mother, cross-stitching, and watching a little bit of ski jumping for the Olympics.

On Sunday, I went to church again. The message was on "Returning to God" and used the scripture Joel 2:12-14. With lent coming up soon, the pastor discussed what people will choose to "give up." He asked "What is holding you back in life? What are you attached to? What is distracting you and leading you off the path?" He advised that you answer those questions and then let that go for lent. Overall it was a great service and once again, I love the music! Also, we sang part of a song in Spanish, which was awesome!

After church, I came home and finished watching How I Met Your Mother. I'm all caught up so now I can finish out watching the last 6 or so episodes in the last season with the rest of the world. I also cross-stitched, relaxed, and skyped my parents. And that's that. It was a good day.

Today (Monday) was my day off so I relaxed some more, wrote this blog, did my Spanish homework, and went to Spanish class. And that's about it. It was a good day. Hope you all have a great week!