The Sala Reservada and the Nude in the Prado Museum Paperback - 2003

From the publisher

The nude is arguably one of the most artistically and morally significant genres of Western art, as well as one of the most controversial, at least in the present day and age. The Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, with one of the greatest and most extensive collections of paintings in the world, assembled over the extended course of Spanish royal collecting, is the repository for a stellar, unique group of nudes created in early modern Europe. Masterworks from the 16th century to the 19th, by Drer, Titian, Rubens, and Goya, among others, once viewed only in the intimate settings of private residences, and later hung in the Sala Reservada of the Prado (from 1827 to 1838, marking a singular episode in the history of the museum), are here brought together once again, in close dialogue. Based on research carried out by Javier Ports Parez, a curator at the Prado, The Sala Reservada and the Nude in the Prado Museum marks an opportunity to reflect on the historical development of the museum's collections while also allowing the reader the sumptuous pleasure of gazing on some of the most intimate, sensual, exploratory, erotic, and art-historically significant paintings of the Western world.