Art in Spain

Spain is one of the great countries of European art, with a history shaped by the meeting of different cultures and by artists who changed world painting. This page is the index of our in-depth guides.

From the origins to the Middle Ages

• Prehistoric art: the caves of Altamira, Levantine art, the Antequera dolmens, the Lady of Elche.
• Ancient art: Phoenicians and Greeks, the Roman Hispania of Mérida and Segovia, Visigothic goldsmithing.
• The Islamic art of al-Andalus: the Mezquita of Córdoba, the Alhambra in Granada, the Giralda in Seville.
• Romanesque, along the Way of St James and in the Catalan Pyrenees.
• Gothic, with the cathedrals of Burgos, León and Toledo.
• Mudéjar art, the synthesis of Islamic techniques and Christian patronage.

From the Renaissance to the eighteenth century

• The sixteenth century: the Plateresque style, Philip II's El Escorial, El Greco in Toledo.
• The seventeenth century: the Golden Age of painting with Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo and Ribera, and polychrome sculpture.
• The eighteenth century: Churrigueresque Baroque, the Bourbon royal palaces, Goya's beginnings.

From the nineteenth century to today

• Francisco Goya, the painter who opens modern art.
• Modern art, from Catalan modernisme to the avant-garde and contemporary art.
• Antoni Gaudí, the architect of the Sagrada Família.
• Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, the twentieth-century greats (see also the Miró Foundation).

The great museums