Calle de Claudio Coello
The street takes its name from Claudio Coello (Madrid, 1642-1693), court painter to Charles II and the last great figure of Madrid’s Baroque school. It was laid out in the Ensanche district planned by Carlos María de Castro (1860) and developed by the Marquis of Salamanca from the mid-1860s.
When José de Salamanca began buying land in 1864 to build his neighbourhood, the streets of the new Ensanche were set out on a grid following the plan Carlos María de Castro had approved in 1860. The streets were named after soldiers, aristocrats and artists of the old regime, and in that gallery of painters Claudio Coello ended up next to Velázquez, Lagasca and Goya.
Court painter to Charles II from 1685, Coello produced his greatest work between 1685 and 1690: The Adoration of the Sacred Host, for the sacristy of El Escorial, where he painted priests and courtiers from life with the king himself at their head. He died in 1693. Anyone passing the Prado Museum today can look for his face in one of the medallions on the façade.