"The arrival of Romanesque art at the Prado in 1948: the Romanesque paintings of Maderuelo", was the title of the third session of the lecture series" The Prado Museum: historical milestones of its collections", given by Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, professor of Art History at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

During his presentation, Sánchez Ameijeiras made the exercise of trying to recover the original perception of the murals of the Vera Cruz hermitage in Maderuelo (Segovia), "a frontier town" populated by villain knights who sought to redeem themselves for the faults committed previously, with a charter of a markedly military character. Keeping in mind the closest historical reality, Sánchez Ameijeireas analyzed its iconography, explained who were its potential viewers, and what part of the paintings was exclusively reserved for the eyes of the officiating clergyman and why. "We will try to see Maderuelo's paintings as laymen and, later, as clerics, since only the latter could access the full vision of what was represented. The sin," he added, "could only be seen by the clerics, and the laymen only had access to the part in which the ways of salvation were represented: either through the fulfillment of the commandments or through penance". It was the clerics who saw the images and then indoctrinated the laity: "these paintings are a catechism for their time, a time when few people knew how to read," said Sanchez Ameijeiras, "they had a clear didactic intention".

These mural paintings, Romanesque frescoes by an unknown author, date from the first half of the 12th century. Its original location was in the Vera Cruz hermitage in Maderuelo (Segovia), it was transferred to canvas in 1947 and reconstructed in the Prado Museum as faithfully as possible to its original layout, even reproducing the chapel of the village. The walls of the chapel are decorated with figures of angels, Apostles and Gospel scenes, and the headwalls have biblical themes.