Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of city's main boulevards.
   It is known as part of the Golden Triangle of Art, which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofia national galleries. The Thyssen-Bornemisza fills the historical gaps in its counterparts' collections: in the Prado's case this includes Italian primitives and works from the English, Dutch and German schools, while in the case of the Reina Sofia it concerns Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century.
   With over 1,600 paintings, it was once the second largest private collection in the world after the British Royal Collection. A competition was held to house the core of the collection in 1987-88 after Baron Thyssen, having tried to enlarge his Museum in Lugano, searched for a location elsewhere in Europe.
   The collection was started in the 1920s as a private collection by Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon. In a reversal of the movement of European paintings to the US during this period, one of the elder Baron's sources was the collections of American millionaires coping with the Great Depression and inheritance taxes.
   In this way he acquired old master paintings such as Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni and Carpaccio's Knight. The collection was later ex
Wikipedia ...