‘The pictures, they look at you.’ A stroll with novelist John Banville through Spain’s Prado Museum

MADRID — It’s the eyes peering from the canvases that get him, their gaze piercing the boundary between art and life.
That’s why acclaimed Irish novelist John Banville prefers to visit Spain’s Prado Museum during its opening hours — even though he’s been invited to browse anytime as part of a month-long literary fellowship.

Still, he doesn’t want to be alone with the multitude of watchers hanging from the walls of the labyrinthine galleries.

“I don’t like coming here after hours, it’s too eerie. The pictures, they look at you,” Banville said turning away from the glare of Diego Velázquez himself looking down from the Spaniard’s greatest work, “ Las Meninas.”
The huge 17th-century painting shows the Infanta Margarita, her young ladies-in-waiting, a dwar …