The story
Jose Lazaro Galdiano was a financier, publisher and compulsive collector who filled his Madrid mansion, a grand house he called Parque Florido, with about 12,000 objects and left the lot to the Spanish state when he died in 1947. He collected almost everything: paintings, ivories, enamels, weapons, jewellery and clocks, with the omnivorous appetite of a self-made man buying across every field at once.
The painting rooms alone would make the visit. There is Goya, including small dark panels, along with El Greco, Zurbaran, and a much-discussed little 'Saviour of the World' long linked to Hieronymus Bosch. English and Italian masters hang nearby.
The house survives as he furnished it, painted ceilings and all, on a quiet street north of the Prado, so the collection is still seen the way a wealthy Madrid collector chose to live among it, room after crowded room.
