José Villegas Cordero (1844 - 1921)

José Villegas Cordero

José Villegas Cordero was a Spanish painter, master of costume and genre scenes, who directed the Prado Museum from 1901 to 1918.

He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Seville and became known as a talented genre painter, noting interesting domestic scenes and accurately portraying the characters. Domestic painting at that time was very popular with the public. The artist also deals with the themes of the East, with great skill drawing pictures from sketches he made on a trip to Morocco.

In 1898 Villegas Cordero was appointed director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, and in 1901 he was appointed director of the Museo del Prado, the same museum that had once copied Velázquez's paintings himself while studying his art.