Spain’s new $286 million art museum may be its boldest yet

Put the recently opened Royal Collections Gallery on your to-do list next time you’re in Madrid, even if you think you’ve had enough of Spanish art, or never thrilled to gloomy portraits of grandees in the first place.

The sleek building alone is a departure from Europe’s usual low-lit, ornate art temples. Its uncompromisingly contemporary architecture in austere concrete and white granite is all the more striking against the adjacent Almudena Cathedral and the royal palace.

Some of the art works have never been displayed before.

The entrance looks like the shopfront of a minimalist, high-end fashion brand: Armani, perhaps. Tall, narrow windows in close rows flood the interior with Spain’s blinding light. The ribbed ceilings, sharp angles and play of light in stairwells is fabulous.

Curators have resisted clutter. The museum supplies huge space across seven levels, but only 650 paintings and objects are on display, each exquisite, and seen to best advantage.

Tapestries, for example, are normally fusty affairs hung against dim castle walls, but here you see them artfully spotlit in a magnificent explosion of colourful medieval fantasy against a white background.

The Royal Collections Gallery has been a long time coming. It was first conceived in the 1930s and launched in 1998. Construction was delayed first by archaeological discoveries, then Spain’s financial crisis, then the pandemic.

Royal Collections Gallery, Madrid.

The opening of this €172 million ($286 million) gallery is a bold move, because it has considerable competition in one of the world’s leading art cities. The Prado has an unrivalled collection of paintings by the likes of El Greco and Spanish court painters Francisco Goya and Diego Velazquez.

The more contemporary Centro Reina Sofia features the ever-colourful and peculiar Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. Meanwhile Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza showcases European and American art.

Red gilded carriage.

The city also has dozens of smaller museums with more manageable collections, such as the gorgeous Museo de Cerralbo and Museo Lazaro Galdiano, where a room is devoted to Goya.

This gallery, however, is more eclectic in its contents than Madrid’s big three, which gives it a something-for-everyone allure. It displays items from across Spain’s royal and heritage buildings – a third will be replaced each year – and not just painting and sculpture.

Yes, the Spanish greats are represented, along with others including Titian, Tintoretto and a magnificently horrible Caravaggio of Salome displaying the head of St John the Baptist on a platter.

Yet there are also decorative artworks, furniture, armour, carriages, clocks and musical instruments. A Flemish tapestry depicting The Triumph of Time is, well, a triumph. There’s even a first edition of Cervantes’ 1605 novel Don Quixote.

St Michael the Archangel Defeating the Devil.

You can equally be entranced by a Bourbon soup tureen, Hapsburg reliquary or gigantic, ornate carriage. Nude nymphs compete with sober Spanish monarchs for attention. There are glorious objects you mightn’t have thought of as art until now: a sedan chair encrusted with gold and pretty paintings, a horse saddle, glass wine decanters.

Some pieces are intriguing, such as a painted, 2.6-metre-tall wooden sculpture showing a dainty-looking Saint Michael in fetching red and blue, about to whack a trampled devil with a sword. The artist Luisa Roldan, the Spanish court’s first female sculptor, modelled the devil on her husband, who clearly must have had terrible toenails.

The museum supplies huge space across seven levels, but only 650 paintings and objects are on display,

It’s among royal pieces that have never been displayed before, though you’d wonder why. Another is nearby: a Velazquez painting of a rearing white horse, which stands against a panel in the centre of one gallery so that your eye is irresistibly drawn to it along the length of the room. There isn’t a single dull piece in this collection, and art has never looked so good.

THE DETAILS

Fly
Emirates flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Madrid via Dubai. See emirates.com

Stay
Hotel Orfila has old-fashioned style and impeccable service with a central but tranquil location. Rooms from €300 ($500) a night. See relaischateaux.com

See
The Royal Collections Gallery is open daily except January 1 and 6, May 1 and December 25. Admission €14 ($23) and an audio guide €5. See galeriadelascoleccionesreales.es

More
esmadrid.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.