The Prado is largely reinforced by foreign pictures and is sadly lacking in historical continuity whether foreign or domestic schools.  It is about ninety years old, having been opened in part (three rooms) to the public in November, 1819.  At that time there were three hundred and eleven canvases.  Other galleries were respectively added in 1821, 1828, 1830, and 1839.  In 1890 the Queen-mother had the Sala de la Reina Isabel rearranged and better lighted.  It contained then the masterpieces, but in 1899, the tercentenary of Velasquez’s birth, a gallery was built to hold his works, with a special room for that masterpiece among masterpieces Las Meninas.  Many notable pictures that had hung for years in the Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, at the Escorial Palace, and and the collection of the Duke of Osuna are now housed within the walls of the Prado.  At the entrance you encounter a monumental figure of Goya, sitting, in bronze, the work of the sculptor J. Llaneses.

The Prado has been called a gallery for connoisseurs, and it is the happiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum in which all schools are represented.  You look in vain for the chain historic that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best foot foremost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez.  Of him there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty.  Bryan only allows him twenty-three; this is an error.  There are fifteen Titians in Florence, divided between the Uffizi and the Pitti; in Paris, thirteen, but one is the Man with the Glove.  Quality counts heaviest, therefore the surprise is not that Madrid boasts numbers but the wonderful quality of so many of them.  To lend additional lustre to the specimens of the Venetian school, the collection starts off with a superb Giorgione; Giorgione, the painter who taught Titian his magic colour secrets; the painter whose works are, with a few exceptions, ascribed to other men—­more is the pity! (In this we are at one with Herbert Cook, who still clings to the belief that the Concert of the Pitti Palace is Giorgione and not Titian.  At least the Concert Champetre of the Louvre has not been taken from “Big George.”) The Madrid masterpiece is The Virgin and Child Jesus with St. Anthony and St. Roch.

It is easy to begin with the Titians, one of which is the famous Bacchanal.  Then there are The Madonna with St. Bridget and St. Hulfus, The Garden of the Loves, Emperor Charles V. at Muehlberg, an equestrian portrait; another portrait of the same with figure standing, King Philip, Isabella of Portugal, La Gloria, The Entombment of Christ, Venus and Adonis, Danae and the Golden Shower, a variation of this picture is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, the other in the National Museum, Naples; Venus Listening to Music, two versions, the stately nude evidently a memory of the Venus reposing in the Uffizi:  Adam and Eve (also a copy of this by Rubens); Prometheus, Sisyphus—­long supposed to be copies by Coello; Christ Bearing the Cross, St. Margaret, a portrait of the Duke of Este, Salom, Ecce Homo, La Dolorosa, the once admired Allocution; Flight Into Egypt, St. Catalina, a self-portrait, St. Jerome, Diana and Actaeon, The Sermon on the Mount—­the list is much longer.