Marilyn Monroe’s Personally Owned Copy of Art Treasures of the Prado Museum

This copy of Art Treasures of the Prado Museum by Harry B. Wehle comes from the personal library of Marilyn Monroe and provides another fascinating glimpse into Marilyn’s appreciation of art and her desire to learn more about the great masters.

Published by Harry N. Abrams in 1954 as part of its Library of Great Museums series, the oversized volume presents the extraordinary collection of Madrid’s Prado Museum through reproductions of works by many of the most important artists in Western art.

Among the artists represented are Francisco Goya, El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian and others.

The book was part of Marilyn’s personal library and remained among her possessions until her passing in 1962.

Marilyn Monroe, Goya and the Great Masters

Marilyn’s ownership of Art Treasures of the Prado Museum is particularly meaningful when considered alongside contemporary accounts of her growing interest in art during the 1950s.

In the September 1956 issue of Screenland, writer Bill Tusher described Marilyn’s intellectual and artistic exploration during her time in New York. She was studying acting, reading extensively and visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Tusher wrote that Marilyn had become “steeped in the world of Goya and Rembrandt.”

Remarkably, Marilyn personally owned substantial art books devoted to both subjects.

Her copy of Rembrandt by Ludwig Münz and this copy of Art Treasures of the Prado Museum, with its extensive representation of Goya and other Spanish masters, survived from her personal library and were ultimately offered together at auction decades later.

The two volumes provide a tangible connection to an interest in art that was being documented during Marilyn’s own lifetime.

Inside Art Treasures of the Prado Museum

Published in 1954, Art Treasures of the Prado Museum is a large-format art volume featuring 167 reproductions from one of the world’s great museum collections, including numerous full-color plates and foldout illustrations.

Its pages allowed Marilyn to encounter masterpieces from the Prado within her own home.

Of particular interest are the works of Francisco Goya, an artist Marilyn was known to admire. Goya is prominently represented in the Prado’s collection and within the book, alongside El Greco, Velázquez and other European masters.

Today, turning through Marilyn’s copy provides an intimate connection to that interest. These are the same pages Marilyn could turn and the same reproductions of great works of art that she could study in her own book.

The Library of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe assembled a personal library of more than 400 volumes covering an extraordinary range of subjects. Literature, poetry, drama, biography, history, politics, philosophy, psychology, religion and art were all represented on her shelves.

Her books provide an intimate record of a side of Marilyn too often overshadowed by her public image. Reading, learning and self-education were important throughout her adult life and became especially visible during her years in New York.

Art Treasures of the Prado Museum, together with her personal copy of Rembrandt, offers physical evidence of that curiosity about the visual arts.