Museo Carmen Thyssen

Masks. Metamorphosis of Modern Identity

This exhibition reflects on the mask as a means of transforming how the human figure is represented in modern art. Originally having a traditional festive use associated with the carnival and fancy dress, which continued to be predominant in commedia dell’arte characters, masks beg...

Zurbarán. Saints

During the Baroque period in Spain the Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation gave rise to an art based on realistic and highly dramatic images whose purpose was to inspire devotion through highly emotionally charged depictions of saintliness. This context, in what was known as the Spani...

Piranesi. A Visionary’s Prints

The more than a thousand prints produced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Venice, 1720−Rome, 1778) are the work of a passionate architect with a painter’s eye who only expressed his creativity in etched plates. A universal master of printmaking, Piranesi earned a reputation as the best ...