Public Domain Photo: Altamira Cave, located near Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, 30 km west of the city of Santander in Spain, is famous for its European Upper Paleolithic (also called Late Stone Age, for the period broadly between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago) cave art comprising paintings, drawings and polychrome rock paintings depicting wild animals and human hands. The cave along with its paintings has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Public Domain Photo: The Traditional Arts and Customs Museum (Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares) on Plaza de América, Parque de María Luisa, in Seville, Spain.
Museo de Artes y Costumbres Populares (The Museum of Arts and Traditions in Seville, Andalusia, Spain) is located in the María Luisa Park, across the Plaza de América from the Provincial Archeological Museum.
The museum occupies the Mudéjar Pavilion (Pabellón Mudéjar) built in 1914, and several alterations and additions have been carried out since then. The museum was established by a decree of 23 March 1972, initially as a section of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. The permanent exhibition space amounts to 5,496 square meters (18,031 feet).
Public Domain Photos: Torre del Oro (The Gold Tower), Spain
Torre del Oro (The Gold Tower), a dodecagonal watchtower in Seville, southern Spain, was built in the 13th century by the Berbers during the rule of Almohad dynasty to control access to Seville via the Guadalquivir River. The tower has three levels, and the third and uppermost level is circular and constructed in 1760.
The Torre del Oro served as a prison during the Middle Ages and as a secure storage tower for precious goods such as gold, silver, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods brought from Spanish colonies to Spain by the Spanish treasure fleets (West Indies Fleet from Spanish Flota de Indias).
Currently the tower is a naval museum for engravings, letters, instruments and historic documents, and the museum outlines the naval history of Seville and the importance of Guadalquivir River.
Image: Portrait of Francisco Goya, 1826, by Vicente López y Portaña (1772-1850), oil on canvas, 93 cm x 75 cm (36.61 in x 29.53 in), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Francisco Goya, born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, (1746-1828) was a Spanish romantic painter regarded as the last of the Old Masters and also as the first of the Modern Masters. The imaginative element in his art and his bold handling of paint, colours and brush strokes became a model for the works of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso. To honour him, a 500 Pesetas currency note was issued by Spain, as seen below:
Photo: The 500-Pesetas bank note issued by Banco de Espana in July 1874 featuring Francisco Goya on the face of the currency. The back side is of a different color, as in the other Spanish currency notes of the period.
PD Photo: El descanso de la modelo (The rest of the model), oil painting on canvas (1890) by Antonio Cortina Farinós (1841-1890), dimensions 56 cm x 42 cm, located at Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain.
Image: The Balance of the Zodiac (La Balance du Zodiaque), oil on panel painting by Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero (1851-1896), size 74.9 cm x 52.1 cm (29.49” x 20.51”) located in private collection.
Image: La Maja Vestida (The Clothed Maja, painted between 1800-1805) by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, oil on canvas, dimensions 97 cm x 190 cm, located in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. It is a clothed version of La Maja Desnuda, exhibited next to it in the same room at the Prado Museum in Madrid. The painting was originally owned by Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy.
