“LA ARQUITECTURA, LA PINTURA Y LA ESCULTURA”

"ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING AND SCULPTURE"


Suñol created this group of sculptures for the façade of our National Museum of El Prado. It is a cheerful allegory appropriate for the place it was to be located. The three figures of the group represent the artist's deep expression of the concept of fine arts that each of them symbolize. Their aspect, posture and the composition in which the skillful hand of the sculptor arranged them, not to mention the attributes that confer character to the group, show Suñol's aesthetic ideal that undoubtedly governed his spirit when he was working on this group bound to the façace of the unrivaled Museum.
Around 1829, the Ionic façade of the Museum was originally presided by a group of sculptures representing the Apotheoses of Apollo and the Muses, a project of the sculptor Pedro Hermoso from Granada, but this artist died soon afterwards and the work was continued by Ramón Barba, who finally abandoned the task due to the poor stone quality.
In 1881, Jerónimo Suñol was entrusted with this project and carried it out in 1898, reducing the group to the allegory of the Architecture, the Painting and the Sculpture. Doubtless, the poor stone quality was responsible for the deterioration of the monument, which had to be removed in the Mid-twentieth Century due to the damage caused to the stone by the passage of time. .