Museum to Prado!

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Darwin Leyva Ayala

<i>Home Institution</i>: Brandeis University <i>Expected Graduation Year</i>: 2024 <i>Academic Major / Minor</i>: Business & International and Global Studies <i>Destination</i>: Madrid, Spain <i>"Hello" in your host country's language</i>: Hola <i>Program Provider</i>: IES <i>Demographics</i>: Hispanic/Latinx, First-Generation College Student <i>Future Career Goals</i>: My future career goals include working for an international company working as a quantitive data analyst or consultant to a global scale, in hopes to find a job that lets me live and work abroad to do business all over the world. <i>Top Three Study Abroad Goals</i>: I hope to try and enjoy as much food as I can, enjoy traveling all over the country and beyond, and immerse myself into the culture of lifestyle of those around me.

Now as many have expected, museums are one of the best and biggest highlights of any city in the world. For me, as someone with little knowledge of the impact art has on the world, I was able to visit the famous Prado Museum here in Madrid. For the second time. Now, as I’m able to bring you into my world of visiting with no prior knowledge of the specific arts, my second trip was full of emotion, and understanding of how beautiful art can actually be. Diego Velzquez, an incredibly popular Spanish painter, known for painting wonders at such a high level, many werenโ€™t able to recreate his pieces to the touch. Popular for painting such as Las Meninas, Vulcanโ€™s Forge, and Christ on the Cross, his paintings were truly one of a kind, one that offers an illusion of reality and painting, an amazing fit that only a small handful of artists can truly say, they are of his caliber.

On the other hand, we have Francisco Goya, another famous Spanish painter who was incredibly important between the lte 118th and 19th centuries, influencing with his many forms of neoclassicism, realism, and romanticism. Incredibly famous for his Dark Paintings, the paintings containings dark and evil significance, an expression of his aging and anger towards society and his mental health. Personally for me, I liked his painting of The Drowning Dog, Saturn, and The Third of May 1808. These paintings brought a new light that I never knew about art, one that impacted my way of thinking that made me appreciate the impact of all the effort and specific details artists put into their work.

Now, while this is a miniscule amount of appreciation that I acknowledge, there are a myriad of amazing paintings and sculptures that are and should be appreciated. I truly hope to continue going to more museums Madrid has to offer, and come back with a better perspective on their significance and importance of the painters personal anecdotes, when creating masterpieces such as these. Unfortunately there are no pictures allowed in the Prado, so I will leave you with this great photo I took in Plaza Mayor!