Reducing the maximum number is not only beneficial in general, it is first and foremost an advantage for group members themselves, who will now be offered an experience that brings them closer to the works.
Friday morning found Diego Velazquez striking the familiar pose he has held for the past 370 years, staring out, brush in one hand, palette in the other, from the huge canvas of Las Meninas. The 14 people who stood before the painting to meet the Spanish artist's haughty gaze not to mention the heavy eyes of the dozy mastiff in the picture's foreground were among the first visitors of the day to Madrid's Prado Museum.
In 2025 the Prado, which is home to such masterpieces as Velazquez's Las Meninas and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, was visited by 3,513,402 people, an increase of more than 56,000 from the previous year. Visitor numbers have risen by more than 816,000 over the past decade. While some museum bosses would be toasting such a success, the Prado's director, Miguel Falomir, is treating it with caution. The Prado doesn't need a single visitor more, he told a press conference on Wednesday.
Infrared pho­tog­ra­phy has even revealed, says the nar­ra­tor of the new Inspi­rag­gio video above, that both paint­ings "share the same changes in the orig­i­nal sketch. For years, it has been known that Leonar­do made small cor­rec­tions to the shape of the Mona Lisa 's hands, adjust­ments to the line of the eyes, and sub­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the curve of the face," the very same cor­rec­tions that were found in the new­ly exam­ined copy.