Madrid’s Museo del Prado has installed an open-air exhibition in Havana. Some of the most famous works by the great maestros from its collection now adorn the perimeter fence of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, one of the fortresses that makes the Cuban capital a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Prado - among the most important art galleries in the world - presents 53 reproductions in the magnificent surroundings of colonial Havana, offering visitors a selection of works from the different schools of its permanent collection.
It is a real luxury to be able to contemplate paintings from the Spanish, Flemish, Italian, French, German and Dutch schools from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries.
For this magnificent exhibition, a prodigious selection was made, to bring emblematic pieces such as Las Meninas by Velásquez; The Nude Maja and The Parasol by Goya; The Anunciation by Fra Angelico; The Garden of Earthly Delights by El Bosco, one of the finest masters of Flemish painting, where imagination and fantasy reach unlimited heights; Ruben’s The Three Graces; The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest by El Greco, a Spaniard born in Crete, one of the great global masters and ahead of his time in abstract painting, which influenced the vanguards of the twentieth century; Poussin’s Parnassus, a paradigm of French baroque classicism; Judith at the Banquet of Holofernes by Rembrandt, the great figure of Dutch baroque; Self-portrait by Durero, Germany’s most important renaissance artist; The Immaculate Conception by Tiepolo, the last great figure of European baroque; Agnus Dei by Francisco de Zurbarán, of the Spanish Golden Age, renowned for his religious paintings; and David with the head of Goliath by Caravaggio, one of the most original artists of the 17th century.
Fortunately, these reproductions are life-size and true to the originals. Digitally printed on high quality vinyl-coated photo paper, to protect them from the sun and rain, the works are mounted on special sheets of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), to ensure durability.
The extraordinary exhibition, El Museo del Prado en La Habana, is the result of collaboration between the museum and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), coordinated by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain to Havana and the City Historian’s Office.
Havana is the first stop for the exhibition, which will tour Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Panama throughout 2016.
The works from the Prado Museum collection will be on show at the Castillo de la Real Fuerza de La Habana on the Avenida del Puerto, from March 4 to May 4.
