To the Editor:

Re “Rediscovering the Prado” (Travel section, March 24):

A seven-hour, six-mile tour of the Prado Museum in Madrid? That’s nothing! Nada!

Picasso spent six months there, mostly parked in front of “Las Meninas.” He was so inspired by Velázquez’s masterpiece that he made 58 iterations of his own, donating them all to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.

As the article noted, Manet had called Velázquez the “painter’s painter,” and said, “Velázquez alone is worth the whole trip.” And this was in 1865, when travel wasn’t exactly easy.

Thank you for the wonderful reminder that museums everywhere are treasure chests and time machines, worth visiting and revisiting. Happy 200th birthday to the Prado, which, as your article put it, is “artistic perfection inside and out.”

Carol Weston
New York

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