As Spain opens the long-awaited Royal Collections Gallery in Madrid this week, its sleek new eight-story building, perched on an iconic hillside next to the Royal Palace, may steal some of the attention from the Old Masters on display.

Spanish architects Emilio Tuñon and Luis Mansilla won the 2017 American Architecture Prize and a dozen other awards for this design, built with white concrete, granite and oak and featuring hundreds of windows overlooking the leafy gardens below the Royal Palace and the expansive Casa de Campo park beyond.

The new museum, costing US$186.8 million, opens Thursday with 650 works spanning five centuries on show, including masterpieces by Velazquez, Caravaggio, Goya and a first edition of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” It’s a representative selection of the 170,000 paintings, sculptures, tapestries and decorative arts usually distributed among the 19 palaces in Spain and other royal sites managed by Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage), said the organization’s president Ana De la Cueva.

Some works on display at the new museum have never before been seen by the public. One is “Saint Michael the Archangel Defeating the Devil,” a wooden sculpture completed in 1692 by Luisa Roldan, the first woman appointed as a Spanish court sculptor.

There are just three works, among the 650 on display, signed by female artists, said Leticia Ruiz, director of the Royal Collections. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Ruiz explained, it was uncommon for women to sign artworks with their own names because men — usually husbands or fathers — held the title of artist or artisan and therefore took the credit. The true number of works displayed by female artists is unknown.

“The fundamental thing about Roldan was her quality, which allowed her to escape anonymity and become head of the workshop, ranked higher than her husband,” Ruiz said.

Another unseen work — previously hidden away in the adjacent Royal Palace — is Diego Velazquez’s “White Horse,” dated 1634-1638. In the painting, the titular horse rears up on its hind legs, but unusually, without a rider. “That’s what’s fascinating about this work,” Ruiz said, adding that Velazquez could have painted the horse first, ready to paint a rider — likely a royal — upon it later.

Caravaggio’s “Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist,” dated 1607, is also included in the collection, one of just four Caravaggios that reside in Spain.

A third of the museum’s 650 items will be rotated annually back to the royal palaces and other Patrimonio sites and replaced with other items from their collections.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【匿名】nìmíng anonymity the situation in which someone's name is not given or known

【轮换】lúnhuàn rotate change regularly in a particular order

本周，西班牙马德里期待已久的皇家收藏馆开门迎客。新地标是时尚的八层建筑，坐落在皇宫旁边的山坡上，抢走了馆里古代大师作品的一些风头。西班牙建筑师埃米利奥•图尼翁和路易斯•曼西拉的设计赢得了包括2017年美国建筑奖在内的十几个奖项，该建筑采用白色混凝土、花岗岩和橡木等材料，有数百个窗户，可以俯瞰皇宫下面绿树成荫的花园和外面广阔的卡萨德坎波公园。

这座耗资1.868亿美元的新博物馆周四开馆，展出的650件作品跨越五个世纪，包括委拉斯开兹、卡拉瓦乔、戈雅的杰作和塞万提斯的《唐•吉诃德》初版。国家遗产委员会主席安娜•德拉奎瓦说，这是该机构管理的17万件绘画、雕塑、挂毯和装饰艺术中最具代表性的作品，平时收藏在西班牙的19座宫殿和其他场所。新展出的一些作品是首次对公众开放。

其中一件是路易莎•罗尔丹1692年完成的《大天使圣米迦勒击败魔鬼》，这是一件木质雕塑，罗尔丹是西班牙首位女性宫廷雕塑家。

皇家收藏馆馆长莱蒂西亚•鲁伊斯说，在展出的650件作品中，只有三件的署名作者是女性艺术家。鲁伊斯解释说，在16和17世纪，女性在艺术品上签名是不常见的，因为男性 —— 通常是丈夫或父亲 —— 拥有艺术家或工匠的头衔和署名权。女性艺术家的作品真实数量不详。

鲁伊斯说：“罗尔丹超群的技艺使她能够摆脱默默无闻的宿命，成为工作室的负责人，地位比丈夫更高。”

另一件不为人知的作品--以前藏在相邻的皇宫里--是迭戈•委拉斯开兹1634-1638年的作品《白马》。这幅画描绘了一匹用后腿站立的马，但不寻常的是马背上没有骑手。鲁伊斯说：“这就是作品的迷人之处。”他补充说，委拉斯开兹可能先画了马，准备以后再画一个骑手 —— 大概是某个皇室成员。

卡拉瓦乔1607年的作品《带着施洗者圣约翰头颅的莎乐美》也在藏品中，这是西班牙仅存的四幅卡拉瓦乔作品之一。

博物馆650件藏品中的三分之一每年将和王宫及其他场所的藏品轮换。(SD-Agencies)