From Monday to Friday, from 9.50 a.m. to 10 a.m., just before the first visitors arrive, Javier Sainz, head of social networks at the Prado Museum, and a person from the museum (specialists from the art gallery, but also room guards, scholarship holders and external experts such as biologists or surgeons) discover through Instagram aspects of the paintings that go unnoticed during a visit.
The activity began in 2017, but with the pandemic and the restrictions on capacity and mobility, the interest in these explanations that reveal, for example, that, under the triangular structure of the dresses of the infantas Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela, daughters of Felipe II, leggings, shirts and a cardboard chest are hidden to repress the volumes of women, it has multiplied.
Videos now total tens of thousands of views and interactions, the most successful reaching 150,000 views.
"On Instagram, only 30% are Spanish, the rest come from Latin America and Hispanics who live in the United States," says Sainz.
"The five cities from where they follow us the most are Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Barcelona and Bogotá."
But Instagram is not the only social network where you can visit the Prado.
On Facebook the numbers double.
And his pictures can also be seen, among other platforms, on TikTok, where those responsible look for the younger audience.
There they have already surpassed the barrier of 100,000 followers.