Inside the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya are a range of pieces dating back to the 1300’s. As I travelled through the galleries it became clear that early Spanish art was heavily influenced by the Christian religion in the same way that Italian museums are gallery after gallery of saints, church officials and Christian scenes. Of the religious works, two stood out for me. The first being this piece titled ‘Crist cami del Golgota’.

It wasn’t the overall picture that caught my eye but this specific image. I found it haunting.

The next is one that I cannot find on the web but simply found very odd. Titled ‘Nen Jesus triomfant’, a sculpture of a baby Jesus standing on a skull by Lluis Bonifas I Masson. I could find very little on the artist and nothing on the piece. Art is about the viewer interpreting the piece, but I would love to ask what he was thinking. I found it quite disturbing, I could see a dead serpent but a human skull?

One other piece that struck me odd was ‘Nina Cosint’. Is it just me or is poor Nina to be forever remembered as the girl with the gigantic man hands?

In the last gallery we came across more contemporary but, as one of the few English plaques stated, ‘not that unique’ pieces geared towards pleasing the general audience of the time. Personally, I found many rich in color and spectacular. Below are a few photos that I will use as desktop backgrounds.

The first from 1805, ‘Gerro amb flors’. A camera fails to capture how rich this painting is.

A gallery was filled with these landscapes, each with striking deep colors and a style that was clearly ‘de rigueur’ during the late 1800’s in Spain. Perhaps I am just a sucker for a striking sky.

The gallery also contained the famous 15m long canvas depicting The battle of Tetuan from the Spanish-Moroccan war. The scale of the piece was impressive.

The last notable was a small coin section tucked away at the top of the gallery. Moving from 200BC to contemporary times, it documents the evolution of coins and forgery. These were from the BC era.

A nice way to spend a few hours.