His paintings Greco and his Goyaby Velázquez and Murillo, belonging to the Frick Collection (New York), will be exhibited from tomorrow, Tuesday, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, marking their return to Spain for the first time in a century.

Nine works from the collection of American industrial magnate Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) are on loan “for the first time in 100 years,” collection director Ian Wardroper said today during a press conference.

This loan took place as the historic site of the Frick Collection in New York was closed for work, he explained.

Paintings were also sent to other museums around the world, including an outstanding set of works by American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler on loan to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris until May.

The Prado will exhibit until July 2 three paintings by Greco, four by Francisco de Goya, one by Diego Velázquez and one by Bartolome Esteban Murillo that make up the Spanish part of the Frick Collection, “limited in number of works but enormous in quality,” according to with the director of the Madrid museum Miguel Falomir.

Among those paintings, the portrait of “Vicenza Anastasi,” which Greco painted around 1575, the only known “life-size portrait” of the Greek painter who spent much of his life in Spain, explained Javier Portus, conservator of the Spanish painting department of the Prado.

Also on public display will be The Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple, painted by Greco around 1600 and bought for $120,000 by Henry Clay Frick in early 20th century Spain, where he bought almost all the Spanish works in his collection.

The first Spanish work purchased by Frick, in 1904, is a “Self-Portrait” by Maurijo, dated 1655, which will also be exhibited at the Prado.

Among the Goya works to be exhibited is “The Blacksmith’s Shop” (1815-20) — where “Goya’s anatomical expression is at its peak” and which had left Giacometti speechless when he visited the Frick Collection, according to Javier Portus — as well as a “Portrait of a Woman” done by the painter when he was almost 80 years old.

Works from the Frick Collection are displayed alongside other Prado paintings with which these works have “close ties,” the museum’s press release states.

For example, Velázquez’s portrait of “Philip IV in Fraga” will be displayed next to Sebastian de Mora’s, a famous portrait of a jester painted by the Seville artist, as both were “crafted on the same canvas” according to Portos.