MADRID.- For more than a century, photography has quietly shaped the way the world sees the Museo del Prado. Long before smartphones, postcards, or digital archives, photographs carried images of its masterpieces far beyond Madrid—sometimes even before the paintings themselves entered the museum. Now, for the first time, the Prado turns the lens inward.
With El Prado multiplicado: Photography as Shared Memory, the Museo del Prado presents its first monographic exhibition devoted entirely to photography, drawn exclusively from its own collections. Opening on February 2, 2026, the exhibition traces how photography has functioned not just as a tool for reproduction, but as a vital instrument in building the museum’s visual memory since the 19th century.
The exhibition brings together 44 carefully selected works from a vast photographic archive of more than 10,000 images—one of the museum’s fastest-growing and most historically significant collections. These photographs document not only artworks, but also the evolving life of the Prado itself: its galleries, display practices, technologies, and even fleeting moments of human presence.
Curated by Beatriz Sánchez Torija from the Department of Drawings, Prints, and Photographs, the show is part of the Prado’s Open Storage program, hosted in Room 60. Since 2009, this space has been dedicated to small-format exhibitions focused on 19th-century collections—works that are often kept out of sight due to space or conservation concerns.
From its earliest days, photography offered something revolutionary: the ability to multiply images with remarkable fidelity. Like engraving or lithography, it allowed artworks to circulate widely, but with an unprecedented level of realism. This made photography the ideal medium for documenting the Prado’s collections and sharing them with audiences far beyond the museum’s walls.
At the heart of the exhibition are photographs of artworks—by far the largest group in the Prado’s photographic holdings. These images are presented not simply as reproductions, but as objects in their own right. Albumen prints, carbon prints, gelatin silver photographs, and photomechanical reproductions appear alongside familiar historical formats such as cartes de visite, stereoscopic cards, and postcards, revealing how photographic technology evolved alongside the museum’s ambitions.
Visitors are also invited to rediscover the Prado’s spaces through historical images of the Central Gallery, the Murillo Room, and the sculpture galleries. These photographs capture a museum that feels strikingly different from today’s: walls densely packed with paintings, period furniture, early heating systems, and galleries that often appear eerily empty—save for the occasional blurred figure of a visitor or staff member caught by the camera’s long exposure times.
The systematic photographing of the Prado’s collections began in the 1860s, at a time when technical limitations required ingenuity. Artworks were frequently moved outdoors to take advantage of natural light, and once negatives were produced, photographers created multiple positives in standardized formats for commercial distribution. This practice fueled the widespread circulation of Prado images among collectors, scholars, and the general public.
Key figures and firms—including Juan Laurent, José Lacoste, Braun, Moreno, Anderson, and Hanfstaengl—played a central role in shaping the international image of the museum. Their photographs of masterpieces such as Velázquez’s The Surrender of Breda became visual ambassadors for the Prado. Some images were taken even before these works entered the museum, or during their participation in national exhibitions, offering rare insight into their earlier histories.
By the early 20th century, the rise of the photographic postcard marked a turning point. Affordable printing techniques such as collotype made images cheaper and more accessible, allowing the Prado’s artworks to circulate globally. Photography became a bridge—connecting the museum to a rapidly expanding international public.
Ultimately, El Prado multiplicado asks viewers to reconsider photography not merely as a means of documentation or reproduction, but as cultural heritage in its own right. These images preserve vanished spaces, forgotten display practices, and shifting ways of seeing art. Together, they form a shared visual memory—one that continues to shape how the Prado is understood, remembered, and experienced today.
