{"id":1992,"date":"2025-08-13T22:37:47","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T22:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/?p=1992"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:01:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:01:21","slug":"alberto-pirrongelli-mural-in-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/alberto-pirrongelli-mural-in-madrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberto Pirrongelli mural in Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my first night in Madrid, I wandered the streets for hours, taking in as much as I could. While I was in the neighborhood of Gran Via<\/a>, I was wandering side streets in addition to the famous Gran Via thoroughfare, and when I was on Calle de la Montera, this mural caught my eye. You can see the detail above, but I’ll also include a wider view of the whole mural here below.<\/p>\n

\"Alberto
Alberto Pirrongelli mural in Madrid on Calle Montera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s a pretty elaborate mural, considering all of the architectural detail present in the art. A man with a top hat is driving a horse and carriage down a busy street, perhaps meant to depict Gran Via? There is another horse and carriage present as well as a trolley in the distance. I was curious, who painted this, and when, and what is the story behind it?<\/p>\n

This style of art can be called “trompe-l’oeil,” which means “deceives the eye” in French, is a style of painting that uses realistic images in a way that creates the illusion that there is a three-dimensional space despite being painted on a two-dimensional surface. From what I can find, the Spanish artist Alberto Pirrongelli<\/a> (1942-2022) created this mural, although it’s not clear what year he did it. It seems he did a lot of large-scale trompe-l’oeil murals throughout Madrid, I’ll have to look through more of my pictures and see if I can identify any more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my first night in Madrid, I wandered the streets for hours, taking in as much as I could. While I was in the neighborhood of Gran Via, I was wandering side streets in addition to the famous Gran Via thoroughfare, and when I was on Calle de la Montera, this mural caught my eye. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47,50],"tags":[74,453,521,700,760],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-street-art","category-travel-explore","tag-alberto-pirrongelli","tag-madrid","tag-mural","tag-spain","tag-trompe-loeil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3105,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions\/3105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}