MNAC: Renaissance & Baroque

This covers the Renaissance and Baroque sections of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. Actually this marks the spot where the big museum begins to run out of Catalan artists, just as Barcelona itself petered out as a great power when Ferdinand and Isabella tied the knot. There's a series of paintings on the Life of St Francis by 18th-century Antoni Viladomat, but that's about it.

Fortunately for the museum, it has a wide range of masterworks by other artists (many of them Italian and Spanish) to take up the slack, many of which were donated by art-collecting politician Francesc Cambó. Among the highlights are a triptych of the Baptism of Christ by the Master of Frankfurt, showing a keen interest in nature; a golden linear St Gregory Pope by Pedro Berruguente; a Humanist vison of the Seven Liberal Arts and Seven Cardinal Virtues by Giovanni de Ser Giovanni; a gracious Portrait of a Lady by Sebastiano del Piombo; Giandomenico Tiepolo’s Venetian Carnival; Goya’s lush and luminous Amor and Psyche; El Greco’s SS Peter and Paul; Velázquez’s Saint Paul; Zurbarán’s Immaculate Conception; and other works by Quentin Metsys, Quentin de la Tour and Lucas Cranach.