Room 74's display has grown from nine sculptures to 17. The Museo del Prado expanded it as part of its programme marking four centuries since Cristina de Suecia's birth. Ariadna dormida sits at the centre. Once identified as Cleopatra, the work is now linked to the queen's own life as a sovereign far from her homeland.
The collection entered the Spanish royal holdings after Cristina's death. Livio Odescalchi acquired part of it in Rome in 1692, and his heir sold that group to the Spanish crown in 1724. The sculptures later stood at places including the palace of La Granja. In 1829, they moved to the Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture, the predecessor of the modern Prado.
Ariadna dormida now lies horizontally at the centre of the room. Visitors can see the folds of the drapery and the details of the sandal straps from different angles. The museum has also changed the lighting and pedestals. Desirée González created the new pedestal design.
The Prado says the room is arranged for circular viewing, letting visitors see links between the sculptures as well as details in each work.
The old name, Cleopatra, connected the sculpture with another queen whom the museum views as displaced from her homeland. The seventeenth-century identification was later revised to Ariadna dormida. The comparison between the two exiled queens belongs to the museum's interpretation, not the sculpture's current attribution.
That arrangement gives the room a clear centre.
The selection includes Hellenistic works and Roman copies of Greek originals, as well as imperial busts carved from marbles in different colours. Visitors can see Venus with a Dolphin, Venus with a Tortoise, busts of Antinous and Achilles, and two heads of Athena.
Two Athena or Minerva busts recall Cristina's reputation at European courts as the "Minerva del norte". The display also includes sculptures of Aphrodite and the bronze Cabeza colosal de príncipe, long regarded as Alexander the Great.
Fauno del cabrito is another major attraction. Across Europe, it is known as the Fauno de la reina Cristina.
Manuel Arias, head of the Prado's Collection of Sculpture up to 1700, said the work was copied thousands of times and studied by academies across Europe. He added that Spain acquired Cristina's collection because the country then lacked an impressive group of classical sculpture. The purchase strengthened the Spanish royal art holdings.
Cristina's works appear beyond Room 74, spread across rooms 71, 72, 73, 74, 47 and 55B. The museum has also created a permanent focus on the Swedish queen's intellectual life and collecting interests.
In the Room of the Muses, visitors can see a treatise by Leonardo da Vinci dedicated to Cristina. The eight sculptures she bought in 1670 for her Roman palace are displayed alongside an equestrian portrait of the queen by Sebastián Bourdon, extending the display beyond sculpture to the culture of her court.
The same room will temporarily hold a new installation of Talía, accompanied by one of the pedestals Cristina commissioned. Made of marble and wood, the pedestal shows that her project covered the setting around the sculptures as well as the works themselves.
A smaller connected room contains four colossal sculptures. Cristina once owned two of them, Apolo and Júpiter Tonante. Venus del pomo occupies the central position. The group shifts the display from intimate busts to monumental figures linked to the queen's Roman residence.
EFE reports that the renewed rooms will launch a programme organised by the Prado and the Embassy of Sweden in Spain during the last quarter of 2026. The activities will examine different parts of Cristina's life and coincide with the four-hundredth anniversary of her birth.
The museum is treating Room 74 and the Room of the Muses as a lasting space devoted to the queen and her collecting activity. The Prado's official account describes the collection as one of the foundations of its classical sculpture holdings. The new display places Cristina's taste for sculpture in the context of Rome and the Spanish monarchy, tracing how artistic knowledge moved and her private collection became part of Spain's public museum heritage.
