In 2025, the National Prado Museum will have three monographic exhibitions focused on El Greco, Paolo Veronese and Rafael Mengs, and will continue to focus on visibility of women in art with the third edition of the itinerary The Prado in feminine.
This Thursday, the art gallery presented its agenda for the year, which reaffirms the way in which the Madrid gallery is sometimes described, “more about painters than paintings“, as defended by Miguel Falomir, director of the Prado Museum. For this reason, in 2025 they will dedicate three exhibitions to three great artists of the Western European tradition.
Sponsored by the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation, El Greco. Saint Dominic the Ancientwhich will take place from February 18 to June 15 in the central gallery of the Villanueva Building, will bring together, for the first time since its dispersion in 1830, most of the works that the Greek painter created between 1577 and 1579 for the Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo de Toledo, the most important commission he received until then.
Even the canvas of the Assumption of the Virgin will return to the Prado Museum after more than a century thanks to an agreement with the Art Institute of Chicago. In fact, the only El Greco canvas that will not be in this monograph it is the one owned by the Hermitage Museumin Saint Petersburg. “Since the invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has made a kind of embargo (on Russia), also cultural. Therefore, it affects cultural loans,” clarified Miguel Falomir.
Another of the monographs, sponsored by the AXA Foundation, will be Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)which from May 27 to June 21 will exhibit 120 works by the Italian painter in the Jerónimos building that will explore three main themes: the creative process of El Veroneses, with sketches and production processes; his ability as a workshop teacher; and his ability to reflect in his paintings the aspirations of the Venetian elites.
Finally, Anton Raphael Mengs. The greatest painter of the 18th century It is the third of these exhibitions. The exhibition, sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, will be installed from November 25, 2025 to March 1, 2026 in the Jerónimos building and will feature some 150 works, coming from national and international loans, ranging from oil paintings, watercolors and frescoes to sculptures, medals and manuscripts that will offer a complete vision of the German artist, his models, influences and his relationship with masters such as Raffaello Sanzio, Correggio and Pompeo Batoni.
New themes, absent until recently
Miguel Falomir, in the presentation of the 2025 agenda, in which he was accompanied by Javier Solana, president of the Royal Board of Trustees of the National Prado Museum, highlighted the commitment that the Prado Museum has had for some years to “incorporate themes that, until not long ago, they were absent.” And this year they continue with their bet on three different areas.
The first of them is contemporary art. “We are not a museum of contemporary art, but we cannot ignore those contemporary artists for whom the Prado and the Western pictorial tradition were important in their activity and in their way of conceiving art,” defended the gallery director. This already started a few years ago with an exhibition dedicated to the Filipino painter Fernando Zóbel and, currently, there is another exhibition focused on the German Sigmar Polke. But, from November 18, 2025 to March 8, 2026, this line will continue with Juan Muñoz.
This exhibition dedicated to the Madrid artist delves into his relationship with the art of the past, specifically, his multiple references to Renaissance and Baroque art and his influences on Parmigianino, Bernini, Goya and Velázquez, among others.
The Virgin of Guadalupea key religious symbol between 1650 and 1790 in Spain, Italy, the Philippines and Latin America, will star in an exhibition from June 10 to September 14. So far, so close. Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain It will bring together 70 works, most of them from Spain and Mexico, which will address the circulation of her image in our country, the relationships between the Virgin of Guadalupe from Extremadura and the Mexican one and the impulse of the cult in the Modern Age.
Women in art
Another area that the museum will explore, again, is the role of women in art, a theme that will be reflected in Artistic promoters of the museum collections (1701-1819)third edition of the itinerary The Prado in feminine. This project delves into the legacy of prominent patrons who played a crucial role in the formation of different collections of the Prado Museum, among them, MarÃa Luisa Gabriela de Saboya, MarÃa Luisa de Parma and, as an exceptional protagonist, Queen Isabel de Farnese .
The Art Gallery’s Study Center, which offers a multitude of new features in 2025, also contributes its bit to this visibility of women with monographic seminars and conference cycles: Spanish intellectuals and the Prado Museum. The Silver Agewhich will take place on March 12, 15, 19 and 22 and will shed light on the careers of MarÃa Luisa Caturla, Margarita Nelken, MarÃa Zambrano and Rosa Chacel; and Spanish intellectuals and the Prado Museum. The 19th centurytraining that will be given on March 26 and 29 and April 2, 9 and 12 and that will approach the lives of Carolina Coronado, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Concepción Arenal and Rosario de Acuña.
Rubens and ‘Writing the Prado’
The 2025 agenda will also feature Rubens and the artists of the Flemish Baroque, an exhibition carried out by La Caixa that the CaixaForum in Barcelona will host from May 29 to September 21 and which features works and objects from the Museum’s lesser-known collections. of the Prado in Madrid that show the unmatched creativity of the painter.
And, together with the Loewe Foundation and in collaboration with Granta en Español, the Madrid gallery continues its initiative Write the Pradowhich consists of the exploration of the history of prestigious international writers and the collections that have served as inspiration for their literary works. This year, the project will have the participation of the British Helen OyeyemiSenegal-born author and winner of the PEN Open Book Award for What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (What is not yours is not yours); and from French Mathias Enardauthor based in Barcelona and winner of the Goncourt Prize for his book Compass.
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