Prado Recreates Lost Roman Chapel with Carracci Frescoes

The Museo del Prado in Madrid has unveiled a new installation in Room 4 that reconstructs the vanished Herrera Chapel from San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome. The project, led by former scientific director Andrés Ubeda and architect Francisco Boccanera, reunites seven fresco fragments by Annibale Carracci painted between 1602 and 1604 for banker Juan Enríquez Herrera. The fragments were detached in the 19th century and are now split between the Prado (seven) and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona (nine). The installation uses contemporary forms to recreate the chapel's scale and spirit, allowing visitors to view the frescoes from below as originally intended. A black-and-white facsimile replaces a missing oval in a pendentive, and a high-resolution photographic copy of the original God the Father Blessing fresco (now in Barcelona) is labeled as a fake. The room also features Italian Baroque paintings by Francesco Albani, Ludovico Carracci, Domenichino, and Guido Reni, including two small copper masterpieces of Saint Apollonia. In the central gallery, walls have been repainted cobalt blue-grey, a color historically used by Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, and Murillo, to enhance the display of 16th- and 17th-century Italian and Flemish paintings. Bronze statues of Charles V and Isabella of Portugal by Pompeo and Leone Leoni have also been added.