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The Prado Museum in Madrid is a barometer of the fortunes of Spain. It is one of the great galleries because it is based on the collection of the Spanish monarchs of the 16th and 17th centuries - when they were the richest and most powerful in the western world. So the Prado has an unrivalled assembly of paintings by court favourites Titian and Velazquez as well as Goya.

Sir Simon Schama's choices begin, however, with a painting that spent only a short time in the Prado before being moved to the neighbouring museum of modern art - Guernica by Picasso. For Sir Simon, this is that exceptional thing - a modernist history painting. Epic in scale and ambition, it captures the brutality and carnage of the attack by German planes on the defenceless Basque town. Simon links this to the horror of Goya's painting The Third of May 1808, in which a firing squad is in the business of slaughtering a group of Madrilenos rebels who have resisted the French invasion of Spain . Both paintings prompt a visceral response from the viewer.

We are also treated to an account of Titian's magnificent equestrian portrait of Charles V and of Velazquez's masterwork Las Meninas (the Maids of Honour), which has been described as the greatest painting ever made.

The programme concludes with Zurbaran's exquisite still life, Angus Dei, a sacrificial lamb ready for the slaughter, beautifully rendered down to its eyelashes.

You can find the names of the paintings and a link to the gallery on the Great Gallery Tours programme website.

Written and Presented by Sir Simon Schama
Produced by Susan Marling
A Just Radio prodution for 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4