Created to display a rotating collection of works usually unexposed, selected among its extensive collections, the "Presentation Room" - on hall 60 – present these days the exhibition Sacred Stories. The Prado Museum retrieves for the occasion a set of religious paintings made by Spanish painters established in Rome in mid-nineteenth century, a period in which the European religious painting was prompted by archaeological finds from the burials of the early Christian martyrs in the catacombs.

The selection of works exhibited is due to José Luis Díez – Chief Curator of nineteenth-century painting – and Javier Barón –Head of the Department –, and presents a valuable set of works after the restoration. Canvases depicting the triumph of the academic purism in the second half of the nineteenth century and recovering major visibility. Compositions by Luis de Madrazo like the Burial of St. Cecilia in the Catacombs of Rome - designed heat directly to the famous archaeological discovery -; the Burial of St. Lawrence in the catacombs of Rome by Alejo Vera; or The Descent by Domingo Valdivieso, in which the influence of Italian artistic sources is total.

This selectionalso includes the great Madrid master Eduardo Rosales, with two young religious works - Tobias and the Angel and The Holy Stigmata of Catherine of Siena, after Il Sodoma –, which embody the purist paint and put the accurate key for penetration and settlement of the realism of Velázquez in Spain root. Sacred Stories will remain on display at the Museo del Prado for a whole year (until January 27, 2013).

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