An important step in the modernisation of the Prado Museum in Madrid will take place later today when the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, inaugurates a new jewel in the museum's crown - 12 newly redecorated rooms dedicated to 17th century Flemish and Dutch masters.
For the first time the Prado will be able to display, in a fitting setting, its priceless collection of masterpieces and what is claimed to be the largest and finest collection of Rubens paintings in the world.
The new rooms (10 Flemish and two Dutch), which will be open to the public tomorrow, are situated on the gallery's main floor. They contain 160 works of which over 100 have been recently restored to their original glory. Particularly striking is Rembrandt's Artemis which, after its cleaning, has regained an almost magical luminosity. It is a notorious fact that the Prado's vaults are packed with the overflow from the main rooms, which rarely, if ever, are viewed by the public because there simply is not enough room to hang them.
Twenty of these previously hidden paintings, recovered from the museum's basements, will go on display for the first time in centuries. The Prado's Flemish collection is much larger than its Dutch collection because, for many years, differences over religion affected relations between Catholic Spain and Protestant Holland, but this in no way belittles the quality of the works in the Dutch rooms.
One room contains a collection of Rubens masterpieces, including the Judgment of Paris, the Three Graces and Diana and Calisto; a second is devoted to Rubens portraits of the 12 Apostles; while another features a dozen Rubens cartoons on mythological subjects designed for King Philip IV as tapestries to be woven at the Spanish royal carpet factory.
The majority of the Flemish collection once adorned the walls of the palaces of the Spanish kings and the residences of their courtiers, and many of the new rooms have been decorated in a grandiose style rather than that of a traditional art gallery.
The Rubens rooms, for example, have azure blue brocade walls and the paintings are hung in attractive groups, as they might be in a royal palace, rather than side-by-side. Rubens' equestrian paintings, which have a room of their own, carry suggestions of the equestrian works of Velazquez.
Few people doubt that the Prado in Madrid ranks among the world's great museums. But it was a museum with problems, which over the years had become overcrowded, antiquated and disorganised. The authorities have been forced to take urgent and drastic steps to keep abreast of the times by refurbishing dusty rooms, rearranging the chaotic distribution of great masterpieces and improving the technical conditions of the galleries.
The first phase of this modernisation process took place last November when the Prado opened 10 rooms devoted to 18th Century European art; the Dutch and Flemish rooms form the second phase.
Next December the Ministry of Culture will announce the third phase with the results of an international architectural competition to design the expansion of the Prado to bring in the neighbouring Army Museum and the ruined cloisters of the adjoining Jeronimos church. It is hoped that when the building work is complete at the beginning of the 21st century the museum will have premises which befit the quality of its collection.