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The route starts in the Upper Goya Rotunda
with this sculpture by the Leoni brothers.
This is the start of the exhibition and in this intervention
I emphasise or enter into dialogue with the power
of nature and the power of man,
which will always defeat the power of nature.
Here this is represented by a golden eagle
heading towards the sculpture of the great Emperor Charles V.
The coat-of-arms of the Spanish Habsburgs is a double-headed eagle and if you look
carefully at the sculpture, on the hilt of the sword there is an eagle’s head.
Not just here but also on the back
there is another eagle’s neck, this time a hidden one, in the Fury…
We are literally over an eagles’ nest
as not just do we find the ones we are looking at here
but directly below us is "The Apotheosis of Claudius",
which has a fantastic Roman eagle
surrounded by twelve others on its pedestal.
In other words, here in the entrance to the central gallery of the Museo de Prado.
My aim has also been to play with the shadows,
emphasising that these objects are "naturalia",
with all their magic and evocativeness.
As you can see, it is reflected on this wall.
Really, it is this eagle that will be guiding us
around this exhibition of "naturalia" in the Museo del Prado.