The collection of pictures, especially of the Flemish and Dutch schools, was very fine, for Queen Isabella Farnese acquired in Rome for this palace in 1735, through the Venetian painter G. B. Pittoni, and on the recommendation of the Abbé Juvara, a considerable number of very notable pictures of these schools. On the creation of the Royal Prado Museum in 1829, the best were taken there by order of Ferdinand VII., and there are at present in its catalogue three hundred and fifty-one pictures which came from this palace, among them three by Correggio, two by Luca Giordano, four by Il Guido, one by Paul Veronese, six by Tintoretto, one by Claudio Coello, sixteen by Murillo, two by Ribera, four by Velazquez, four by Van Dyck, fourteen by Rubens, and twenty-four by Teniers. Among the pictures of the original collection which exist at the present time, there are none of great merit; but the large number painted by Michel Ange Houasse, of the French school, who was born in Paris in 1675, and died in Spain in 1730, being the chief painter of Philip V., are of no little merit. The marble statues that enrich the Lower Gallery, some of them Greek ones of great merit, like the Castor and Pollux group, form the greater part of the sculptures of the Madrid Museum. They were acquired in Rome through the celebrated Venetian sculptor Camillo Rusconi, and came from the collection made by Queen Christina of Sweden. Their cost, 12,000 doubloons, or 36,000 dollars, was defrayed by Philip V. and Isabella Farnese equally.