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One of America’s most beloved paintings goes on display next to the Spanish masterpiece that inspired it at the Prado Museum in Madrid. Anchor Marco Werman has more.

MFA Director Malcolm Rogers and Prado Director Miguel Zugaza (Photo: Andres Valentin, Prado)

'Las Meninas' by Diego Velázquez (1656)

'The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit' by John Singer Sargent (1882)

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit and Las Meninas on view at the Prado (Photo: Andres Valentin, Prado)

• On The World: The daughters of Edward Darley Boit
• Prado Museum
• John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery

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MARCO WERMAN:  Last October I spoke with Erica Hirshler, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, about John Singer Sargent’s great 19th century painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.  Hirshler had just published a book about the painting called “Sargent’s Daughters”.

ERICA HIRSHLER:  They’re four little girls, each one wearing white.  Three of them in white pinafores and the littlest one in a white dress.  Two of them stand in the background in the shadows.  One of those girls leans against one of the large Japanese vases.

WERMAN: Well this week Erica Hirshler is in Madrid with the Sargent painting.  It rarely travels and it has never been to Spain.  But for the next two and a half months it will hang at the Prado Museum in Madrid next to the 17th century Spanish masterpiece that inspired it.  That painting is Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez.  It is also a portrait of little girls, most notably the five-year-old Princess Infanta at its center.

HIRSHLER: I’m standing in the Grand Gallery of the Prado Museum watching the facilities crew here hang Sargent’s Daughters of Edward Darley Boit at right angles to Velazquez’s Lan Meninas.  We’ve been looking at it, trying to decide how high to hang the Sargent so that its relationships with Las Meninas are clear and so that it looks well.  It’s actually quite a bit smaller than Las Meninas.  But we’re going to get the little girls at about the same height so that they relate to one another.  Wow.  Oh my God.  It brings tears to your eyes to see it here.  Sargent was a great admirer of Velazquez’s work and, in fact, Sargent came to Madrid in 1879 in the fall and set himself up to make copies after Velazquez and one of the paintings that he spent the most time with was Las Meninas.  I’m thinking that Sargent was so aware of his position in this heritage of the old masters and for one of his greatest paintings to be hanging in this place and it looks great.

WERMAN: That’s Erica Hirshler of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  She’s in Madrid for the installation of John Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.  The painting will be on view at the Prado from tomorrow through May 30th.  You can see images of the paintings at the world dot org,

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