NA 2 - File 1B: Families in the Prado Museum

Dear students & readers of this blog,

In the last few classes we have been talking about families. And the pretext to deal with this topic has been a world-famous painting that nowadays is in the National Museum of El Prado: The Family of Carlos IV, by Francisco de Goya. 

Now we are going to follow an itinerary along the different rooms of El Prado, suggested by the museum itself. To be able to do it, we need to understand what we call 'a family' nowadays, so we have to ask ourselves the following questions:

- What do we consider 'a family'?

- What is our family like?

When answering these questions, probably the concept 'nuclear family', that is, a family formed by the father, the mother and the siblings, came to our minds. But even then, sometimes there are people we have no blood relationship with who are so close to us that we consider them as members of our family too. So then, we should ask ourselves:

- What other people do we consider as part of our family? 

This would be the family of the 21st century, but what about families in the 17th or 18th centuries? Were they like ours? Maybe these families were bigger or had more children. Maybe high-class or noble families included other people: ladies-in-waiting, pets...

Back then, there were no photographs to immortalise families, so the way of doing it was through painting. But not many people in those times had the money to commission a professional painter to paint a portrait. Therefore, what type of families can we find at the museum?

Our mission in this itinerary will be to guess what type of family is depicted in each portrait, how it is represented and why it was made in the first place.

As we said before, in class we discussed The Family of Carlos IV, by Francisco de Goya. Click on the picture to listen to an audioguide in English. Who is who? Why have they been depicted?

So now, we are ready to start our itinerary:

FAMILY TYPE 1

In this picture we can see two scenes, one in the foreground and the other in the background. Answer the following questions:

- In the foreground scene, who can we see?
- Are they relatives?
- What relationship is there between them, do you think?
- What type of family is this?
- What is happening at the background? Who are they? Is there any relationship between them? Are they related in any way to the people in the foreground?

Click here for an answer to the questions above.
Click here for a description of the painting from the online catalogue of the Prado Museum.

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FAMILY TYPE 2

In this picture we can see a middle-aged man standing next to two other women - one of them young, the other also middle-aged - and a five-year-old girl.

- Who's the woman in the centre? 

- What are they doing? 

- Might we be missing some other important member of the family?

Click here for an answer to the questions above.
Click here for a description of the painting from the online catalogue of the Prado Museum.

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FAMILY TYPE 3

We can see nine people in this picture, together with a dog on the foreground. There are two more people, only you have to look closely and carefully to find them. Where are they?

Are all the people on this painting relatives? Why are they then in the painting?

Click here for an answer to the questions above.
Click here for the audioguide of the painting from the online catalogue of the Prado Museum.

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FAMILY TYPE 4

Here we can see a lady sitting next to a man who is standing and holding a girl's hand. There's one more girl, leaning against the woman's legs. Two more children, this time two boys, surround the woman. Clearly, they are a family, being the man and the woman the parents of the four children around them. But there are two other members we have not mentioned and that are hidden from view. Who are they?

- What type of family is this?

- How has the painter depicted them? Are they happy or sad?

Click here for an answer to the questions above.
Click here for the audioguide of the painting from the online catalogue of the Prado Museum.

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As you can see, families have changed a lot throughout the centuries, don't you think?

(Source: Área de Educación del Museo Nacional del Prado. www.museodelprado.es)