I have never set foot inside the Prado in Madrid, almost a city within a city, as I understand it, and home to Velázquez and Goya, Las Meninas and the Black Paintings. Even so, over the last few weeks I have made brief, dreamy trips through the Prado’s halls and galleries in the mornings. Emerging from sleep just before nine, I am suddenly right there amongst vivid art and surrounded by echoing, distorted voices. I am amongst fellow travellers, too, bickering, grateful, prone to emoji-speak. And all of this without leaving my bed.
The timing has been strangely ideal. Almost a month back, I was in hospital for a short but exhausting multiple sclerosis treatment, which has left me languid and occasionally confused upon waking. With a few weeks off work, I have been stirring late with nothing to do but lie tangled in the duvet and gawp at my phone. Dawdling on Instagram one morning, I saw that @MuseoPrado, the Spanish gallery’s official account, was filming a live video. I tapped on the icon and found I was staring at a vast, intricate arrangement of humanity, arms and legs and bodies clustered together, some terrified, some placid, some monstrous. In the distance, rounded hills gave way to the perfect edge of an electric blue sea. It was arresting, this scene: it seemed so medieval and also so modern.
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