Once the Madrid museum’s biggest draw, The Year of the Famine in Madrid fell out of favour for political and aesthetic reasons
No trip to the Prado these days is complete without a visit to room 12 of the Madrid museum, where Diego Velázquez, a five-year-old princess and a sleepy mastiff stare down from the enormous canvas of Las Meninas.
Two hundred years ago, however, the must-see exhibit at the newly established museum was not Las Meninas, but a gigantic allegorical work that sought to remind Spaniards of their heroic resistance to the Napoleonic occupation and their loyalty to King Ferdinand VII.
