El artista en Italia

The Museo Nacional del Romanticismo, in its Encuentro room, reveals to the public what mid-19th-century artistic apprenticeship trips to Italy were like, back when the Spanish Academy in Rome did not yet exist, thanks to the drawings by Federico de Madrazo (1815-1894), Luis de Madrazo (1825-1897) and Vicente Palmaroli (1834-1896) held in the museum's collections. It can be visited from 24 June to 18 October.

Through these drawings, the exhibition illustrates this formative period for those who sought to study the art of Roman Antiquity as well as the Italian Middle Ages and Renaissance, and to emulate great masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael or Giotto.

These artists crossed paths in Italy with the local popular types so fashionable at the time for their picturesque and costumbrist appeal. These figures became the subject of drawings that spread very rapidly thanks to print collections. Students found models dressed in traditional attire at the various drawing academies that were beginning to populate the city, and they could also draw the peasant women who came to Rome to sell their goods and pose, especially around the Piazza di Spagna.