The Prado Museum
holds my favorite collection of paintings anywhere.
The paintings give an eye-pleasing overview
of Spain's rich history,
from the Golden Age through its slow fade.
In the 1500s, Spain was Europe's superpower,
flush with gold from newly discovered America
and ruled by this man, Emperor Charles V.
Here the great Venetian artist Titian
portrays Charles as he was,
the most powerful man in the world.
Charles' son, Phillip II, though very religious,
collected a bevy of sensual Venetian paintings.
In Titian's "Venus and the Organ Player,"
we see the conflicts these people struggled with,
torn between high cultural pursuits,
as symbolized here by music, and more worldly pleasures.
"Danae," also by Titian,
is a virtual Renaissance "Miss August."
Money falling from the sky made royals and aristocrats,
the people who commissioned this kind of art,
feel their wealth was blessed by God.
Hieronymous Bosch, who painted 500 years ago
and seems radical even today,
gives all this hedonism a different spin.
His "Garden of Earthly Delights," a three-paneled altar piece
that actually hung in the king's bedroom,
shows where all this worldly temptation ultimately leads.
First, man and woman are born, innocent in the garden of Eden,
blessed by a kind God.
Then foolish people chase after earthly delights,
a pursuit that is ultimately a vicious cycle.
They're lured by the world's pleasures:
eating,
drinking,
sex.
Two lovers are suspended in a bubble.
And in the third panel, the bubble pops.
These party animals are heading straight to hell,
a burning post-apocalyptic wasteland,
where sinners are led off to eternal torment.
Every sinner gets his just desserts.
Gluttons are themselves consumed.
Good-time musicians
are tortured by their own instruments.
Gamblers have their party forever crashed.
And a lecher gets sexually harassed by a pig-faced nun.
In the center of it all,
a face peers out of this bizarre nightmare,
a self-portrait of the artist: Bosch.
Starting in the 1600s,
Spain entered a long, slow period of decline.
But its wealthy court continued to finance great art.
Perhaps the most loved painting in all the Prado
is "Las Meninas" by Diego Velázquez.
Velázquez takes us behind the scenes
as he paints a portrait of the king and queen.
The artist paints himself at work, along with a princess,
who's watching her mom and dad pose.
She's joined by her servants, the "meninas."
In this wonderfully 3-D painting,
the unique perspective
is that of the king and the queen as they pose.
In fact, they can be seen in the mirror
at the back of the room.
By 1800, Spain was no longer a world power,
but it continued to produce great artists.
Francisco de Goya was Spain's official court painter.
He dutifully portrayed the king and the queen
in all their royal finery.
But many see Goya becoming disenchanted with his patrons.
Here in these vacant faces
he reveals the ineptitude of the royal family.
Goya's painting called "The Second of May"
recalls how Spain hoped
the ideals of Revolutionary France would spread,
bringing democracy to Spain.
But when Napoleon invaded, their hopes were dashed.
On May 2, 1808,
Madrid's working people staged a protest.
French soldiers, with their Egyptian mercenaries,
slashed through the crowds and arrested the ringleaders.
The next day -- this painting's called "The Third of May" --
the French began reprisals.
Ignoring the rebels' passionate pleas,
a faceless firing squad mows them down without mercy.
Goya, disillusioned by all the senseless violence,
portrayed common people as the victims of war.
El Greco-philes will want to visit
Toledo's Santa Cruz museum.
Originally an orphanage and hospital,
today its wards house 16th-century art,
including a superb collection of El Greco paintings.
His work mixes influences
from all three of his places of residence.
Icon-like faces from his Greek homeland,
bold color and twisting poses from Italy,
and the almost mystical spirituality
from Catholic Spain.
El Greco painted supernatural visions,
elongated saints stretched between earth and heaven.
He painted souls, not bodies.
Faces flicker like candles.
Thoroughly modern in its disregard of realism,
his art feels contemporary even today.
This altar piece, finished one year before El Greco's death,
is a culmination of his inimitable style.
It combines all his signature elements
to express an other-worldly event.
While on earth the city of Toledo sleeps,
a vision takes place overhead.
An angel in a billowing robe spreads his wings and flies up,
supporting Mary, the mother of Christ.
She floats through warped space,
to be serenaded by angels
and wrapped in the radiant light of the Holy Spirit.
Mary is charged from within by the ecstasy of her faith.
No painter before or since
has captured the mystery of the spiritual world
like El Greco.
The town of Figueres has the Salvador Dalí museum,
the essential Dalí site.
Ever the entertainer and promoter,
Dalí personally
designed, decorated, and painted it
to showcase his life's work.
He was buried
right here in the floor of this room
in 1989, and the museum serves
as a mausoleum to the artist's creative spirit.
When Salvador Dalí was asked,
"Are you on drugs," he replied,
"I am the drug. Take me."
Dalí produced some of the most thought-provoking
and trailblazing art of the 20th century.
His surrealistic imagery continues to disturb
and intrigue to this day.
The best known of the surrealists,
Dalí created photo-realistic images
set in bizarre dreamscapes.
His life changed forever in 1929,
when he met an older Russian woman
named Gala.
She became his wife, muse, model,
manager, and emotional compass.
An audience of golden statues looks down on the museum.
Above Dalí's personal 1941 Cadillac
hangs the boat enjoyed by Dalí and his soul mate, Gala.
When she died, he was devastated.
Below the boat drip blue tears.
Squint at the big digital Abraham Lincoln,
and he comes into focus.
Look closer, and you see Abe's facial cheeks
are Gala's other cheeks.
The "Homage to Mae West" room
is a tribute to the sultry seductress.
Dalí loved her attitude.
She was to conventional morality
what he was to conventional art.
Facial features are furniture,
arranged so that,
the intended vantage point,
everything comes together.
Mae West.
The ceiling of the lounge is a highlight.
It shows Gala and Dalí
as they reach for the heavens.
Dalí's drawers are wide open
and empty, indicating he gave everything to his art.
Dalí enjoyed his most creative years nearby
in the fishing village of Cadaqués,
which has long been a haven
for intellectuals and artists alike.
[ seagulls squawking ]
its craggy coastline, sun-drenched colors,
and laid-back lifestyle inspired artists
from Matisse and Duchamp
to Picasso.
For today's tourists, mellow Cadaqués
offers a peaceful beach-town escape near Barcelona.
In the 1920s, Salvador Dalí and Gala moved in,
bringing international fame to this sleepy Catalan port.
Casa Dalí shows how a home can reflect
the creative spirit of an artistic genius and his muse.
His studio was equipped with an innovative easel.
It cranked up and down to allow the artist
to paint while seated, as he did eight hours a day.
The bohemian yet divine living room
comes complete with a mirror to reflect
the sunrise onto their bed each morning.
Like Dalí's art, his home defies convention.
And like the artist himself,
it's playful and provocative.
Nearby, filling five grand old mansions,
is a highlight for many visiting Barcelona --
the Picasso Museum.
Since Pablo Picasso spent his formative teenage years
here in Barcelona,
this is the best collection
of his early art anywhere.
By seeing his youthful realistic art,
it's easier to appreciate his artistic genius
and his later abstract art.
The museum lets you trace the evolution of Picasso's work
right back to his schoolboy days.
Pablo's earliest art is realistic and serious.
Even as a 14-year-old, his portraits
of grizzled peasants
show impressive technique
and psychological insight.
He painted his first teacher, who happened to be his father.
In this portrait of his mother,
Picasso works on the expression in her cameo-like face.
At art school, he captured the human anatomy brilliantly.
During these years, Pablo learned
the rules he would later
so expertly break.
His self-portraits show the self-awareness
of a blossoming intellect, a kid who,
I imagine, was a handful in junior high school.
As a 15-year-old, Pablo dutifully
entered art school competitions.
This was his debut work, The First Communion.
While a religious subject, it's more an excuse
to paint his family.
Notice his sister's exquisitely painted veil.
In Science and Charity,
Picasso, still just a teenager,
conveys real feeling.
The doctor -- Pablo's father, again --
represents science.
The nun represents charity and religion.
Judging by
her hopeless face and the lifeless hand,
it seems Pablo wants to show that death
is inevitable.
In his early 20s, Picasso went to
turn-of-the-century Paris,
a city filled with light and life and love.
He went bohemian, made friends with prostitutes,
poets, and other artists.
He dabbled in different styles and was inspired
by the leading artists of the age.
He painted Impressionist landscapes like Monet,
posters like Toulouse-Lautrec,
still lifes like Cezanne,
and garishly colored fauvist works like Henri Matisse.
But later, the suicide of his best friend
and his own poverty led Picasso
to his "Blue Period."
He produced lots of blue paintings,
which matched his mood.
By this point, Picasso has developed
a distinct style of his own,
painting not what he sees,
but what he feels.
Despair,
a touching portrait
of a mother and child,
captures the period well.
Eventually emerging from his blues,
Picasso enjoyed a long, innovative,
and prolific career
as a mature artist,
freed from boring realism
and the constraints of convention.
All his life, Picasso said,
"Paintings are like windows open to the world."
These canvases, painted when the artist was in his 80s,
show the joys of the sun-splashed French Riviera.
To the end, Picasso continued exploring
and loving life through his art.
As a child, he was taught to paint as an adult.
And as an old man, he declared he had learned
to paint like a child.