UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
THE PRADO
A GUIDE AND HANDBOOK TO THE ROYAL PICTURE GALLERY OF MADRID. ILLUSTRATED WITH 221 REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD MASTERS
THIS volume is an attempt to supplement the accurate but formal notes contained in the official catalogue of a gallery which is considered the finest in the world. It has been said that the day one enters the Prado for the first time is an important event like marriage, the birth of a child, or the coming into an inheritance; an experience of which one feels the effects to the day of one’s death.
The excellence of the Madrid gallery is the excellence of exclusion; it is a collection of magnificent gems. Here one becomes conscious of a fresh power in Murillo, and is amazed anew by the astonishing apparition of Velazquez; here is, in truth, a rivalry of miracles of art.
The task of selecting pictures for reproduction from what is perhaps the most splendid gallery of old masters in existence, was one of no little difficulty, it is believed that the collection is representative, and that the letterpress will form a serviceable companion to the visitor to The Prado.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
TOLEDO
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE “CITY OF GENERATIONS,” WITH OVER 480 ILLUSTRATIONS
THE origin of Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths,” is lost in the impenetrable mists of antiquity. Mighty, unchangeable, invincible, the city has been described by Wörmann as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock.”